Biggest ever survey finds 11% living with HIV in SA

This is according to the biggest ever HIV/AIDS household survey conducted by the HSRC and the Nelson Mandela Foundation, in which almost 16 000 people over the age of two agreed to HIV tests.

The country’€™s overall HIV prevalence rate has dropped slightly from 11.4% in 2002, when the first household survey was conducted, to 10.8%.

However, there has been a 5% jump in HIV infection among young women aged 15 to 24, with 17% of whom are now living with HIV in comparison to 12% three years ago. This is four times the rate of HIV positive men in the same age group.

Many of the anomalies raised by the first survey appear to have been ironed out by the new survey, which had a substantially bigger sample size.

KwaZulu-Natal, ranked fourth in the 2002 survey, is confirmed as the province with the highest HIV prevalence (16.5%), followed by Mpumalanga (15.2%), Free State (12.6) with North West (10.9%) and Gauteng (10.85) almost neck-and-neck. The Western Cape has the lowest infection rate of 1.9%.

HIV infection among whites is recorded as 0.6%, as opposed to 6% in 2002.

Children have a high HIV prevalence, with 4.9% of males aged 2’€“4 years and 5.3% of female children living with HIV.

 ‘€œRace is an important epidemiological variable because it embodies socio-economic contexts that influence risk of HIV infection,’€ notes the survey.

‘€œIn South Africa, Africans live in contexts that increase vulnerability to many illnesses ‘€“ and HIV is no exception.’€

The overall HIV prevalence among Africans is 13.3% in 2005. In African adults aged 15’€“49 years, almost 20% of men and 24.4% of women are HIV positive.

People living in informal settlements aged between 15 and 49 have ‘€œby far the highest HIV prevalence’€ at 25.8%.

Men living in informal areas had more multiple partners than those living in formal urban areas.

For females aged 15’€“19 years, HIV prevalence was 29% amongst those who had a partner who was five or more years older than themselves. The figure is also high among females aged 20’€“24 years (34.9%).

About a third of men had partners at least five years younger than they were.

About 14.4% of the children aged 2’€“18 years reported that they were orphans. This is broken down into 2.6% maternal orphans, 10.0% paternal orphans and 2.0% double orphans.

‘€œThis means that overall there are a total of 2 531 810 orphans in South Africa in 2005, ‘€œ says the survey.

The overwhelming majority (92.8%) of orphans were African, followed by 4.8% who were coloured. KwaZulu-Natal (19.8%) and Eastern Cape (18.1%) had the highest number of orphans, while the Western Cape (7.5%) had the lowest.

Orphans were most likely to live in rural informal areas (19.6%) and least likely in urban formal areas, which is a clear indication that most live in poverty.

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