JOHANNESBURG, 30 January: South Africas AIDS epidemic, often regarded by health workers as a disease of the poor, is in fact spreading quickly among the countrys richest and best educated people, researchers said Tuesday.
The study by the Markinor polling firm and the University of South Africa (UNISA) showed a rapid increase in HIV infections in professional people and those with full-time employment – both key to South Africas hopes to spur economic development.
– The high risk group is growing, it is getting older and it is getting richer, said Carel van Aardt, director of UNISAs Bureau of Market Research, adding: – This could represent a whole new wave of the epidemic.
The study challenges widespread assumptions about South Africas HIV/AIDS crisis, which is often described as a disease of the rural poor who lack access to information, treatment and basic health services.
South Africa now has some 5,5 million HIV-positive people out of a total population of some 45 million, giving it an estimated overall prevalence rate of about 11 percent and one of the worst AIDS caseloads in the world.
The new study examined some 3.500 South Africans between the years of 2002-2005, a poll engineered to reflect the countrys racial and economic demographics.
Overall, the study identified young people below the age of 30 as being at greatest risk for HIV, as most previous research has done. But it also found infections rising at alarming rates in the rich and better educated – groups not previously singled out as being at risk.
– We are on the eve of a very scary reality unless we start making some changes, said Tracy Hammond, Markinors project manager for the study.
Kilde: The Push Journal
