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SA has most living with HIV
Anso Thom, Health-e
2008-08-05

South Africa has the largest number of HIV-positive people in the world with an estimated 5.7 million living with HIV in 2007. This is according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAids) 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic released yesterday which reported that almost 33 million people were now living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, with 25 million people having died of HIV-related causes since the beginning of the epidemic.

The report confirmed that HIV data from antenatal clinics in South Africa showed that the country's epidemic might be stabilising, but added there was no evidence of major changes in HIV-related behaviour. The report also pointed out that the HIV prevalence in South Africa, as well as in neighbouring Lesotho and Namibia, was stabilising at extraordinarily high levels. UNAids executive director Peter Piot said the report did show that the world was making progress in its response to AIDS, but that for every two people who started antiretroviral therapy, another five became infected. Sub-Saharan Africa continued to bear the brunt of the epidemic with an estimated 1.9 million people newly infected with HIV in this region in 2007, bringing to 22-million the number of people living with HIV. Two thirds of the global total of 32.9 million people with HIV lived in this region, and three quarters of all AIDS deaths in 2007 occurred here. 

The report also showed that sub-Saharan Africa's epidemics varied significantly from country to country in both scale and scope. Adult national HIV prevalence was below 2% in several countries of west and central Africa, as well as in the horn of Africa, but in 2007 it exceeded 15% in seven southern African countries - Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Meanwhile the 26% HIV prevalence found in adults in Swaziland in 2006 was the highest prevalence documented in a national population-based survey anywhere in the world. In Lesotho and parts of Mozambique, HIV prevalence among pregnant women was increasing, with some provinces in the central and southern zones of Mozambique recording adult HIV prevalence rates exceeding 20%. The report confirmed that in countries most heavily affected, HIV had reduced life expectancy by more than 20 years, slowed economic growth and deepened household poverty.

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