From: Steve Wingate
Subject: IUFO: AIDS cutting Africans' life expectancy to 30 years, new numbers show
Date: 10 Jul 2000 16:44:34 -0400
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AIDS cutting Africans' life expectancy to 30 years, new numbers show
The Associated Press
DURBAN, South Africa (July 10, 2000 8:41 a.m. EDT
http://www.nandotimes.com) - The populations of some African countries
will soon
begin to fall as millions die of AIDS, and by 2010 life expectancy will plunge
to around 30 - a level not seen in at least a century, according to
new estimates.
The figures released Monday are demographers' latest attempt to grasp
the devastation of the AIDS epidemic, which has swept across
southern Africa during the past few years with staggering speed and
sweep.
"It's hard to comprehend the amount of mortality we will see in these
countries," said Karen Stanecki of the U.S. Census Bureau, which
compiled the projections.
Stanecki presented the new figures at the 13th International AIDS
Conference, which is being held for the first time in Africa, ground zero of
the epidemic. Thousands of AIDS experts from around the world are
participating.
Speakers at Monday's meeting struggled for superlatives to describe the
scope of this disease in the poorest parts of the globe, especially
sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly three-quarters of all HIV-infected people
live.
"The problem will get much worse before it gets better," said Dr. Roy M.
Anderson of Oxford University. "This is undoubtedly the most
serious infectious disease threat in recorded human history."
Dr. Kevin DeCock of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control called the
epidemic "Africa's worst social catastrophe since slavery."
Experts estimate that 25 million Africans are already infected with HIV, the
AIDS virus, and most of them will die within the next five to eight
years. In Botswana, the world's worst-hit country, more than one-third of all
adults carry the virus.
Stanecki said that by 2003, the populations of Botswana, South Africa and
Zimbabwe will begin to fall because of AIDS deaths and
dropping fertility resulting from the epidemic. In those countries, the
populations will drop between one-tenth and three-tenths of 1 percent.
Without AIDS, they would have grown between 1 percent and 3 percent.
Stanecki said this is the first time the census bureau has projected
negative population growth due to AIDS. The population growth of several
other countries - including Malawi, Namibia, Swaziland and Zambia - will
be near zero because of the disease.
AIDS already has sharply reduced life expectancy in many African
countries. For instance, it is now 39 in Botswana, instead of 71, as it
would have been without the disease. And the numbers will only get worse,
experts said.
Stanecki projected that by 2010, life expectancy will be 29 in Botswana, 30
in Swaziland and 33 in Namibia and Zimbabwe. Without AIDS, it
would have been around 70 in those countries.
"These are a level of life expectancy that have not been seen since the start
of the 20th Century," she said.
Experts note that programs to educate people about condoms and other
ways of avoiding infection clearly can work in southern Africa.
Because of early efforts, the epidemic never occurred in Senegal, and
Uganda has reversed its high infection level.
AIDS medicines have dramatically improved survival in the United States
and Europe, but the drugs are simply too expensive and hard to
deliver for most of the world's infected. Five drug companies have pledged
to lower their prices in the developing world, but health officials in
poor countries note they still lack the health care services necessary to
offer the medicines to the sick.
On Monday, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, created by Microsoft's
founder, said it will spent $50 million in Botswana to strengthen that
country's health care system. Merck & Co. said it will match the donation in
Botswana, mostly by providing AIDS drugs.
A day earlier, at Sunday's AIDS conference opening ceremony, South
African President Thabo Mbeki defended his government's AIDS
policies by saying he is simply looking for an African solution to the
scourge.
Mbeki has endured a hail of criticism since he convened a panel of
scientists to investigate whether the HIV virus causes AIDS - a fact
long-accepted by most AIDS experts - and refused to provide medicine to
pregnant women to reduce risks for mother-to-child transmission
of the disease.
"Some in our common world consider the questions that I and the rest of
our government have raised around the HIV/AIDS issue ... as akin
to grave criminal and genocidal conduct," he told delegates. "What I hear
said repeatedly, stridently is 'Don't ask questions.'"
As Mbeki spoke, hundreds of people walked out of the ceremony.
-----------------
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