HIV and AIDS

It’s remarkable that HIV/AIDS, being such a part of everyday life in South Africa, has, as of yet, escaped being a topic of any blog. Daily I am passed by men, gaunt skin strung tightly across cheek bones, sullen eyes sunk deep in the skull who are walking skeletons clinging to life, fighting the disease that ravages this continent – this country.

According to a 2003 study conducted by the United Nations’ special department on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) 42 million people worldwide live with HIV. The study went on to indicate that more HIV positive people live in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else on earth, roughly 25 million people, or 66% of those effected globally.

UNAIDS indicated that this highly centralized outbreak is a result of a combination of factors including poverty, social instability, high levels of sexually transmitted infections, low social status of women, sexual violence, transient labor, and lack of good governance.

South Africa boasts the sixth highest prevalence of HIV in the world, with 18.8% of the population estimated to be infected. UNAIDS estimated that, in the year 2006, some 320,000 people died of AIDS related deaths in South Africa. 320,000. The population of the state of North Dakota, in one year.

South Africa is regarded as having the most SEVERE national HIV epidemic in the world and has the highest incidence of infection. The total number of South Africans living with the virus by the end of 2005 (as estimated by UNAIDS) was an appalling 5.5 million.

The highest numbers of infections were found among women in the 25-34 years old age group. 33% of AIDS related deaths from 1997-2002 were young people between the ages of 15-44 (World Health Organization 2005 – WHO). The virus is thought to be passed primarily through sexual intercourse.

The hardships for those infected and their families begin long before death. Stigmas related to the virus abound, social ostracizing coupled with fear and despair creates a terrible burden on family members. Furthermore the loss of income encountered when the infected happens to be the primary breadwinner in the household can be crippling.

The loss of income is especially concerning in a society where approximately 61% of South Africa’s 18 million children live in poverty and 7.9 million people are unemployed (this equates to a staggering unemployment rate of 40.9%).

AIDS has created countless orphans in the past decades. UNAIDS defines an orphan as a child under the age of 17 whose mother has died, as such there are 1,200,000 orphans in South Africa due to the fatal effects of HIV/AIDS.

The government is taking steps to address and eradicate the problem. Without engaging in a political discourse (which as PCV I am not entitled to do openly) suffice it to say the campaign focuses on national mass media attention in the form of billboards and posters plastered around the villages and cities. Limited funding is given to where it is needed most, at the community level where intervention, through education in prevention techniques, is most necessitated. For it is in these rural communities that the vulnerability to HIV is most acutely felt.

Most information listed above was derived from the following sources:

The AIDS Foundation of South Africa’s Treatment Literacy Training Programme
The Canadian International Development Agency
South Africa: AIDS Foundation
HIV/AIDS in South Africa: An Introduction for Peace Corps Volunteers
UNAIDS
WHO