5.8m HIV+ in SA by 2010
2005-11-29 09:56
Special Report
A documentary which blames former president Thabo Mbeki's Aids denialism for the deaths of 330 000 people, will not be broadcast by the SABC, but will be shown on e.tv.
Johannesburg - The number of HIV infections in South Africa would increase to 5.8m by 2010, an actuarial model released on Monday has predicted.
This, despite significant interventions already introduced to limit the spread of infection, said the Actuarial Society of South Africa (ASSA).
The model showed that 5.2 million South Africans were living with HIV at the moment, 530 000 of them infected between mid-2004 and 2005 when 340 000 people died of Aids.
"As the number of new HIV infections currently exceeds the number of Aids deaths, the HIV prevalence is still slowly growing in South Africa," said ASSA.
According to the model, just 120 000 of the country's 520 000 Aids sufferers in need of anti-retroviral treatment were receiving the drugs. About 1.5m South Africans had died of Aids-related illnesses since the start of the pandemic.
It found KwaZulu-Natal "clearly" the worst affected province, with the highest rates of HIV prevalence and the lowest life expectancy.
Other severely affected provinces were Gauteng, the Free State, Mpumalanga and the North West.
Provincial differences in life expectancies were only partly a reflection of their socio-economic profiles, said ASSA.
"One reason is that some provinces are predominantly urban, and others are predominantly rural, with levels of sexual networking usually being higher in urban areas," said ASSA Aids Committee convenor Dominic Liber.
Geographical factors were also likely to affect access to HIV prevention services.
"There are also cultural differences between provinces, for example circumcision has been shown to reduce the chance of becoming infected by HIV."
ASSA expects provincial health departments to make use of its model in their implementation of the national Comprehensive HIV and Aids plan.
It was the first model to take into account the plan and the first to model the disease in the provinces in a way which was consistent with the model for the country as a whole, said University of Cape Town actuary, Professor Rob Dorrington.
- SAPA