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A country on the edge
Real estate news By Alan Whiteside and Scott Naysmith
19 November 2007 11:59
Even though economic growth is substantial and social service delivery -- while not as fast as we want -- is reaching millions, Aids will continue to kill hundreds of thousands in South Africa, burdening families and orphaning children. Recent research in Swaziland presents a picture that is disastrous and deteriorating. The Swazi people are suffering from a long-term emergency, aggravated by domestic political ineptitude and inaction and the misinformed policies of international organisations. Our research shows Aids is the tipping point and this has implications across the Southern African Development Community.
In 1992 the first Swazi HIV prevalence survey found that 3,9% of women attending antenatal clinics were infected. By 2004 this had risen to 42,6%, the highest in the world. There are biases in antenatal data and so the 2006 Demographic and Health Survey, which included more population testing, was welcomed as an additional source of information. The news was not good. It was estimated that 220 000 people, 19% of the population, are infected. If this prevalence were applied to South Africa and the United States, then nine million South Africans and 56-million Americans would be infected.
Quality of life has declined steadily, echoing the rise of infection. The United Nations reports that from 1999 to 2004 maternal deaths increased from 230 to 370 per 100 000 births. Aids kills half of the children dying under the age of five. Swazi citizens born in 1993 could expect to live 60 years; today Swaziland has the lowest life expectancy in the world at just 31,3 years. The epidemic is shredding the structure of Swazi society. Families are torn apart as breadwinners fall ill and die and grandparents take on the care of their sick children and orphaned grandchildren. There are already 130 000 orphans and vulnerable children, a number projected to increase to 200 000 by 2010. As elderly care?givers die, the oldest children take over without a support network. Sadly, Swazis have come to see the circumstances afflicting a third of their nation’s children as ordinary and inevitable -- an “abnormal normality” that reflects a society with few options.
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