A report that the government of South Africa tried to suppress indicates that AIDS is now the number one killer in that nation. Meanwhile, a United Nations report suggests that the AIDS epidemic is starting to hit Asia.
South Africa’s Medical Research Council prepared a report on the extent of the AIDS epidemic in that nation that was finished earlier this year. The government of Thabo Mbeki, however, suppressed the report and refused to allow it to be released. Somebody recently leaked a copy of the report to Johannesburg’s Mail and Guardian.
The report indicates that in 2000, one of every four deaths in South Africa was caused by AIDS, making it the single largest cause of death. Unless something is done about the epidemic, by 2010 it will have killed 5 to 10 million people.
“Without treatment to prevent AIDS,” the report claimed, “the number of AIDS deaths can be expected to grow within the next 10 years to more than double the number of deaths due to all other causes.”
The report called for widespread use of anti-AIDS drugs, which so far the Mbeki government has rejected.
Meanwhile, ahead of the 6th International Congress on AIDS in Asia, the United Nations released a report that the AIDS epidemic is beginning to spiral out of control in that region of the world.
The UN considers AIDS to be an epidemic if infection rates exceed 2 percent of the adult population of a country. In Burma, 7 percent of the adults are infected with the disease, while along the borders of China and Thailand, the infection rate is believed to be above 10 percent.
Yet despite the fact that about 40 percent of all people infected with AIDS worldwide live in Asia, most Asian countries have so far refused to recognize that the disease poses a major threat.
Source:
Asia warned of AIDS epidemic. Larry Jagan, The BBC, October 5, 2001.
AIDS ‘leading killer’ in South Africa. The BBC, October 5, 2001.