An estimated 25 million people in Africa are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, with the majority of those cases in southern Africa. These numbers mean the continent faces a wide range of problems that likely will only get worse during the next 20 years, according to a new United Nations report.
Given the grim statistics made available in the
"Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic" (viewable through the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software), it's hard to imagine how current and future problems could be understated, the Washington Post reports.
In seven of these southern African nations, an estimated 20 percent of all adults are HIV-infected. That number reaches 33 percent in Botswana, where it also is estimated at least two-thirds of all 15-year-old boys will die of AIDS before they reach 50.
In the rest of these southern African nations, from one-third to one-half of all 15-year-olds likely will die because of the disease.
There are a number of other issues facing these societies because of HIV/AIDS:
More than 13.2 million children under 15 have lost either their mother or both parents to AIDS;
In many countries, the crisis is affecting educational and economic systems. In Côte d’Ivoire, 70 percent of teacher deaths are caused by HIV, and Zambia lost at least 1300 teachers in 1998, close to the number of new teachers trained that year.
There is some good news, however. The number of sexually-active young people who are using condoms has increased dramatically. Likewise, the number of young people who are putting off sex until they are older also has increased.
The U.N. report -- prepared by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in advance of the 13th International AIDS Conference in July -- estimates it may take up to $2.6 billion for a basic effort that would slow HIV/AIDS transmission from mothers to infants, and that could treat patients suffering from other infections brought on by HIV.
The UN news release can be found at:
http://www.unaids.org/whatsnew/press/eng/
durban260600.html
The full version of the Washington Post article can be found at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
articles/A6283-2000Jun27.html
