SOUTHERN Africa has the world’s fastest accelerating Aids rate and is confronting debilitating human and economic devastation with 10% of its workforce infected, the Southern African Economic Summit in Durban heard on Sunday. Martin Harvey, head of a Zimbabwean insurance company, told delegates Zimbabwe had lost one million people to Aids in six years. In 1987, his company had only seven Aids cases on file, but today 60% of death claims from employees in Zimbabwe are due to Aids, Harvey said. However, in terms of the general population, Aids accounts for 80% of the death claims. Alan Whiteside, Director of Health Economics and HIV/Aids research at the University of Natal, estimates that 12% of the adult population of countries in the Southern African Development Community are infected with Aids.