- DURBAN (Reuters) - South
Africa is entering the "death" phase of its AIDS epidemic as
mortality outstrips new infections, presenting new challenges for a health
care system struggling to cope with the disease, scientists said on Monday.
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- "South Africa is experiencing a devastating epidemic
-- the world's worst -- and this is just the beginning," Quarraisha
Abdool Karim, a researcher at the University of Natal, told the country's
first national AIDS conference in Durban.
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- South Africa's government is under fresh attack by activists
who accuse it of failing to respond adequately to a disease which already
infects 4.7 million South Africans, the highest single caseload in the
world.
-
- Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang -- blamed by
activists for delaying the widespread introduction of life-prolonging anti-retroviral
drugs in public hospitals -- was publicly heckled at the opening of the
conference on Sunday.
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- She repeated her government's position that the drugs
could not be rolled out without adequate preparation.
-
- Activists say this policy effectively signs a death warrant
for hundreds of thousands of South Africans who might otherwise cope with
HIV as a manageable illness.
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- Several hundred members of the Treatment Action Campaign,
the country's largest AIDS activist group, marched on the conference center
on Monday, many wearing T-shirts saying they were HIV-positive.
-
- "The government's action is profoundly unhelpful...it
has dragged its feet, it has delayed, it has deceived," TAC leader
Zackie Achmat told reporters.
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- "REAL FACE" OF EPIDEMIC SEEN
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- While adult HIV/AIDS prevalence in the country is starting
to plateau at around 33 percent, sickness and death are on the increase
as the disease kills off workers in Africa's most vibrant economy.
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- "What we are starting to see is the real face of
the epidemic," Abdool Karim said.
-
- Scientists say South Africa's real AIDS death toll is
hard to quantify because government statistics list many probable AIDS
fatalities as deaths due to tuberculosis and other common HIV-related opportunistic
infections.
-
- But activists say AIDS kills about 600 South Africans
each day -- a number that seems sure to grow as more people enter late
stages of the disease without drug treatment.
-
- "Mortality is really just starting and won't peak
for another three to four years," said Rod Hoff, a senior epidemiologist
in the AIDS division at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
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- "The social and economic impact will be considerable.
Industry is really going to take a hit as people get sick."
-
- Abdool Karim said that in one major South African hospital,
King Edward in Durban, an estimated 90 percent of hospital patients were
HIV positive.
-
- In another sign of the toll AIDS is taking on the country,
national mortality rates for both men and women are rising sharply. It
is up by 150 percent for men aged between 20 and 40, and even more for
women aged between 20-35 -- the group most at risk for contracting the
disease, researchers say.
-
- Abdool Karim said the rising numbers of deaths would
likely stabilize the overall national AIDS prevalence rate but it would
be "premature and foolish" to assume that AIDS was coming under
control in the country.
-
- The data showed that South Africa would have to redouble
its efforts at both prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, as only a two-pronged
approach would be effective, she said.
-
- "This is an incredibly critical period," she
concluded, adding that it was "non-negotiable" the government
should quickly roll out drug treatments.
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