- The number of people dying of Aids in South Africa is
more than three times higher than government figures suggest, the country's
medical research council said.
-
- Many people who died from HIV/Aids were recorded as having
died of related illnesses such as pneumonia and tuberculosis, the council
said. The stigma still attached to the disease had helped keep figures
artificially low.
-
- In research published in the journalAids, the article's
authors estimate that more than 112,000 people died of HIV-related illnesses
in 2000-01, almost three times the number given by South Africa's department
of home affairs.
-
- The article adds that about 74 per cent of children under
five who died in the same year died of HIV/Aids-related illnesses, rather
than the 25 per cent that government figures suggest.
-
- Dr Debbie Bradshaw, a co-author of the report, said:
"A large proportion of deaths due to HIV infection are misclassified
[on death certificates] as the opportunistic infections that are the immediate
cause of death."
-
- She added that many doctors were reluctant to certify
deaths as due to HIV because the family may then struggle to claim life
insurance or funeral policies. The bereaved also did not want to have to
deal with the social stigma of the disease.
-
- The findings add fuel to a continuing battle between
medical workers and government officials, who are often reluctant to reveal
the true extent to which HIV/Aids has hit the country.
-
- In 2002, a survey by the government agency Statistics
South Africa showed that only 8.7 per cent of deaths in the country were
caused by HIV/Aids, but medical researchers and Aids charities insisted
at the time that it had downplayed the scale of the pandemic.
-
- The medical research council warned that the agency's
latest survey, to be released this week, will again underestimate the number
of Aids deaths in the country. Statistics South Africa was to have published
its report on 12 January, but many believe it has been delayed because
of political considerations.
-
- President Thabo Mbeki has come under fire in the past
for downplaying the problem of Aids; for years he questioned the link between
HIV and Aids and delayed implementing Aids-prevention programmes. Much
to the fury of health workers, the government had in the past warned that
Aids drugs were unsafe, and had refused to provide antiretrovirals to prevent
mother-to-child HIV transmission.
-
- President Mbeki has now softened his stance on Aids,
but in the meantime South Africa is believed to have developed one of the
highest rates of HIV/Aids in the world. Detractors say President Mbeki's
attitude towards Aids is far less realistic than that of his predecessor,
Nelson Mandela, who announced three weeks ago that his last surviving son
had died of the disease.
-
- The lobby group Treatment Action Campaign said the research
council study showed that South Africa had fallen behind the rest of the
world. "Given the political climate and the resultant disincentives
for reporting HIV/Aids in the South African setting, it is probably not
surprising that the level of reporting of HIV or Aids as a cause of death
is low," the group said. "This is in stark contrast to Brazil
where a policy of universal access to free treatment was implemented early
in the epidemic and the level of reporting on HIV on death certificates
is over 85 per cent."
-
- ©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
-
- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=606828
|