By ESENDOM
December 9, 2025
Lea en español: Solo 38 % de las mujeres dominicanas posee conocimiento integral sobre el VIH, revela UNICEF
Key points
Only 38.1% of women ages 15–49 in the Dominican Republic have comprehensive knowledge about HIV, even though 98.4% have heard of AIDS.
41.9% hold discriminatory attitudes toward people living with HIV, and 90.1% say fear of social rejection discourages testing.
Among young women ages 15–24, the gap is wider: just 32.1% have comprehensive knowledge and only 24.7% were tested in the past year.
While 90.6% of pregnant women received an HIV test during prenatal care, children and adolescents still lag in early diagnosis and treatment.
UNICEF urges stronger comprehensive sexuality education, stigma reduction, and better use of data—through the “Los Datos Cuentan” (“Data Matters”) campaign—to design effective public policies.
Santo Domingo. — Decades after the start of the HIV epidemic in the Dominican Republic, just 38.1% of women ages 15–49 possess comprehensive information about the virus. The figure—drawn from the Enhogar-MICS 2019 survey by UNICEF and the National Statistics Office (ONE)—reveals a critical gap: knowing is not the same as understanding.
Although 98.4% of women have heard of AIDS and most reject myths such as transmission by mosquitoes (63.9%) or supernatural causes (89.9%), the rate collapses when three criteria are assessed simultaneously: knowledge of protection methods, recognition of risk, and the ability to identify false information. Under that combined standard, the share drops to just over a third.
Stigma remains a major obstacle. 41.9% of women report discriminatory attitudes toward people living with HIV, and 90.1% acknowledge that fear of social rejection deters people from getting tested. Information circulates—but entrenched prejudice persists alongside it.
For young women (15–24), the picture is worse: only 32.1% have comprehensive knowledge, and just 24.7% were tested in the last 12 months and know their result. In a context of high adolescent pregnancy and gender inequality, this combination poses a latent risk to sexual and reproductive health.
In maternal and child health, 91.3% of women can identify at least one route of mother-to-child transmission, but only 53.5% recognize all three: pregnancy, delivery, and breastfeeding. Even so, 90.6% accepted and received HIV test results during prenatal care—significant progress that needs to be sustained.
UNICEF emphasizes that children and adolescents remain behind in diagnosis and treatment. Globally, only about 55% of children living with HIV receive antiretroviral therapy. Projections from UNICEF and UNAIDS warn that if program coverage were cut in half, an additional 1.1 million children could acquire the virus and more than 820,000 could die of AIDS-related causes by 2040.
Anyoli Sanabria, UNICEF’s acting representative in the country, stresses that isolated information is not enough. What’s needed is comprehensive sexuality education from an early age, adolescent-friendly health services, and evidence-based public policy—rather than policy driven by prejudice.
The upcoming Enhogar-MICS 2025 round and the “Los Datos Cuentan” campaign aim to push the country to confront its numbers honestly and build a more inclusive response to HIV—centered on women, children, and youth who still fear that asking for a test might cost them more than their health: their dignity.
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