HIV-pregnancy rate 'rising'

2004-09-24 08:40

Antoinette Pienaar

Johannesburg - South Africa's HIV/Aids pandemic is not stabilising for pregnant 24-year-olds.

This age group is being infected with HIV at an incredible rate.

More than 37% of 24-year-old pregnant women were HIV-positive last year, which constituted an increase of almost 5 percentage points since 2002's 32.3%.

These figures were drawn from the health department's latest report about the prevalence of HIV/Aids among pregnant women in ante-natal clinics.

The Democratic Alliance compelled the department for the second year in a row to make public its annual HIV/Aids and syphilis report.

No media conference was held. On the contrary, the report was quietly published on the department's website after the DA threatened to take legal action.

'Not statistically meaningful'

Health spokesperson Sibani Mngadi said the report could not be issued due to "logistical problems".

The department also maintained, like last year, that the increase in the HIV infection rate among pregnant women from 24.8% in 2001 to 26.5% in 2002 and 27.9% in 2003 was not statistically meaningful.

Women between 25 and 29 were still worst hit with an average prevalence rate of 35.4%.

From the data on women in the report, the department estimates there are now more than 5.6 million HIV-positive people in South Africa.

About 3.1 million of these are women, of whom more than one-third are between 20 and 30. There are more than 2.4 million HIV-positive males, of whom 1.1 million are between 20 and 30.

More than 727 000 of South Africa's teenagers (between 15 and 19) are HIV-positive, and 96 228 babies are infected.

Only cause could be HIV/Aids - expert

Dr Debbie Bradshaw, head of the Medical Research Council's unit that investigates the impact and causes of disease and death, said earlier this year the mortality rate of women between 20 and 49 grew by 168% during the past six years - so drastic that researchers cannot but attribute it to HIV/Aids.

The department's Dr Lindi Makubalo said the prevalence of HIV was growing at a slower pace than before.

She said the strong growth among young people in certain age groups was not statistically meaningful as there were so few of them.

- Beeld