Thailand and South Africa – The choices nations make
BARCELONA – The fact that South Africa’s HIV prevalence rate stands at well over 20% and that of Thailand at less than three percent, illustrates the choices the two nations made about 10 years ago, according to William Makgoba, president of the Medical Research Council.
Speaking at the World AIDS Conference, Makgoba said that in 1990, South Africa and Thailand were on almost the same parallels with both countries reporting prevalence rates in the region of 2%.
Ten years later, Thailand’s prevalence rate has remained at around two percent while South Africa’s had shot up to almost 25%.
‘They are at completely different codes of the spectrum and it illustrates the choices nations make,’ he said.
Describing South Africa’s epidemic as explosive, and fuelled by factors such as migration and sexually transmitted diseases, he said it was worrying that studies in KwaZulu-Natal showed that in some areas up to 26% of children were not enrolling for school.
He said projection models showed that mortality among South African women could increase three fold and that among men two fold.
‘We are only really beginning to experience the results of the high infection rates. We are yet to hit the mortality wave and the effect of this which is of course a high number of orphans.’
He said South Africans had been conscientised to do something about the epidemic and that there had been robust debate.
‘Whatever heated debates there has been in our country has moved us from zero to somewhere. At least we have moved positively.’
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