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HIV infects 6.5m, new data show
July 12, 2005
By Andrew Quinn

Johannesburg - More than 6.5 million of South Africa's 44 million people might now be HIV positive, a sharp jump on previous estimates, according to figures released by the department of health.

The department, which released a 2004 study of women at antenatal clinics, said that between 6.29 million and 6.57 million South Africans now carried HIV compared with 5.6 million at the end of 2003.

The figures contradict a May study by Statistics SA, which estimated that about 4.5 million people were infected with HIV - a toll that would make South Africa drop behind India as the country worst hit by the global pandemic.

Extrapolations from data at antenatal clinics, where pregnant women have their blood tested, form the basis for most estimates of HIV prevalence in Africa, which is home to more than 25 million of the estimated 39 million people infected with HIV worldwide.

But the method has been criticised in some African countries as exaggerating the spread of HIV/Aids on the continent.

Debate flared up last year with a study purporting to show that UN estimates of Aids prevalence in Kenya were inflated. The projected number of Kenyan adult HIV infections of 3 million were cut to 1 million.

UNAids dismissed the study's conclusions as unfounded and stood by its original forecasts.

The South African study said that 29.5 percent of the pregnant women surveyed were HIV positive, up from 27.9 percent in 2003. In KwaZulu-Natal, the worst affected province, the HIV prevalence rate among pregnant women was more than 40 percent.

The department acknowledged that its estimates for national prevalence assumed that HIV prevalence among all pregnant women was the same as that for those visiting antenatal clinics. Also HIV prevalence for all women between the ages of 15 to 49 years was assumed to be the same as that in pregnant women.

Rob Dorrington, the head of the Centre for Actuarial Science at UCT, said the department's new estimates were too high.

"Is it any wonder the public is confused when the same government offers estimates that differ by between 2 million and 2.5 million?" he asked. - Reuters