South Africa’s Aids epidemic, often regarded by health workers as a disease of the poor, is in fact spreading quickly among the country’s richest and best-educated people, researchers said on Tuesday.
The study by the Markinor polling firm and the University of South Africa (Unisa) shows a rapid increase in HIV infections in professional people and those with full-time employment — both key to South Africa’s hopes to spur economic development.
”The high-risk group is growing; it is getting older and it is getting richer,” said Carel van Aardt, director of Unisa’s Bureau of Market Research. ”This could represent a whole new wave of the epidemic.”
The study challenges widespread assumptions about South Africa’s HIV/Aids crisis, which is often described as a disease of the rural poor who lack access to information, treatment and basic health services.
South Africa now has about 5,5-million HIV-positive people out of a total population of 45-million, giving it an estimated overall prevalence rate of about 11% and one of the worst Aids caseloads in the world.
The new study examined about 3 500 South Africans between the years of 2002 and 2005, a poll engineered to reflect the country’s racial and economic demographics.
Overall, the study identified young people below the age of 30 as being at greatest risk for HIV, as most previous research has done. But it also found infections rising at alarming rates in the rich and better educated — groups not previously singled out as being at risk.
”We are on the eve of a very scary reality unless we start making some changes,” said Tracy Hammond, Markinor’s project manager for the study.
Up the social ladder
Researchers said there are many possible factors behind the spread of HIV among upper levels of society, among them confused government messages about HIV/Aids, greater disposable income and leisure, and general apathy about safe-sex practices.
But whatever the reason, Aids is certainly climbing the social ladder for both black and white South Africans.
Among South Africa’s professionals, for instance, the study found a 34% jump in estimated HIV prevalence, rising to 8,3% in 2004 from 6,2% in 2002.
People with full-time jobs — who in South Africa account for only about half the working population — saw estimated HIV-prevalence rise to 19,2% in 2005 from 14,4% in 2002, an increase of 36%.
Unemployed people, while seeing a bigger percentage jump in HIV prevalence, remained lower in terms of actual prevalence rates with just 18,4% estimated infected in 2005 compared with 11% in 2002.
In a further piece of alarming news, the study said HIV infection is growing most quickly in those aged between 30 to 34, threatening people just as their careers take off.
Overall, the richest third of South Africa’s population still has a lower estimated HIV-prevalence than the poorest third, at 8,5% compared with 23,4%.
But the study said new infections are increasing most rapidly in this demographic, rising by 39% between 2002 and 2005 against only a 14% increase for their poorest compatriots.
”This time it is not the employees, it is the employers. It is not the people without bank accounts, it is the people who make investments,” Markinor’s Hammond said. ”If we thought the AIDS epidemic was having bad economic effects already, this could take us to the crisis point.” — Reuters