SOUTH AFRICA: Report finds that AIDS is the leading cause of death

AIDS is the leading cause of death among South Africans and could claim as many as six million lives in the country by 2010 if preventive measures are not taken, according to an unreleased report by the South African Medical Research Council, the ‘Sunday Times’ reported.

Among South Africans between the ages of 15 and 49, 40 percent of deaths last year were AIDS-related, the report said. Entitled ‘The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Adult Mortality in South Africa’, the report’s findings contradicts President Thabo Mbeki’s statements that other causes such as violence and poverty are the nation’s leading killers. Last week, Mbeki had ordered the government to re-evaluate its social policy spending in light of 1995 data from the World Health Organisation that said “external causes” such as accidents, homicide and suicide, not HIV/AIDS, constitute the leading causes of death in South Africa.

The MRC report, which is based on data from the South African Health Department’s antenatal survey and the Actuarial Society of South Africa’s AIDS model, found “rapid changes” since 1997 in the country’s mortality figures among young adults. The report predicts that if nothing is done to stop the spread of HIV, by 2010 there will be a “three-fold” increase in deaths among children between the ages of one and five and AIDS-related deaths will account for twice as many deaths as all other causes combined.

According to the ‘Sunday Times’, there appears to be “confusion” among government officials about the soon-to-be-released report. On Thursday, Health Minister Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang told a Parliament press briefing that the MRC researchers had “worked alone outside the collective which had been established,” a fact that “worried” the government. However, a Health Department statement obtained by PlusNews on Monday said that the report was compiled in part because of a recommendation by the Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel to assemble current AIDS mortality data. Mbeki’s spokesperson, Bheki Khumalo, would not comment on the “issues of statistics” or why Mbeki “had not spoken to local researchers” regarding the mortality estimates.

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[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]