SA's Aids figures '33% lower'
2004-07-06 22:51
Cape Town - The number of people infected with HIV/Aids in South Africa is about 33% less that researchers initially thought.
This has been revealed by the latest model of the impact of HIV/Aids on the South African population, issued by the Actuarial Association of South Africa on Tuesday.
According to the association's findings for 2002, about five million South Africans were HIV-positive. The findings for 2000, which were released in 2001, claimed that an estimated 7.5 million people would be infected with the virus by 2004.
This report also estimated that 480 000 South Africans would die from Aids-related illnesses in the next 12 months. However, new findings show the death toll will be about 330 000.
Depending on how fast the government can institute its antiretroviral treatment programme, the death toll in 2010 would be anywhere between 290 000 and 450 000 a year.
The programme, therefore, will have an enormous impact on the pandemic.
This also means the life expectancy of South Africans now goes up from 43 years to just under 50 years.
Other factors now taken into account
Prenatal statistics have been seen until now as the most-important raw data for the national HIV/Aids estimate.
However, the association's new estimate has taken other factors into account for the first time.
Among these are the prevention campaign and Aids treatment.
Leigh Johnson, one of the researchers, said they kept in mind the fact that the government was behind schedule in the launch of its treatment plan.
But these figures are considerably lower than those of the United Nations.
Senior researcher Professor Rob Dorrington said this was mainly because the UN had not taken the death toll in South Africa into consideration.
However, Dorrington warned that although the association's 2002 estimate was good news, at least 3.5 million South Africans would die of Aids-related illnesses by 2010.
He also said the 2002 model predicted about 500 000 South Africans would contract the virus in the next year.
Will peak about 5.4 million in 2012
Johnson said researchers expected the overall number of new infections to drop annually, because of treatment and prevention programmes and also because South Africa was at a relatively late stage of the pandemic.
Johnson said the total number of people living with the virus would peak about 5.4 million in 2012.
This was because antiretroviral treatment would extend an infected person's lifespan.
Meanwhile, South Africa has been given R180m by the United States government to fight the pandemic. This was in addition to the US's earlier donation of R436m.