Results from a household survey in Khayeliitsha, Cape Town
September 2003 to March 2004: University of Cape Town, Doctors Without Borders, Institute for Tropical Medicine (Antwerp)
HIV has attracted more political and financial attention than any other infectious disease in recent years, yet efforts to prevent further infection have mostly been ineffective. This is nowhere more obvious than in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for almost two-thirds of the 40.3 million people living with HIV and over three-quarters of the 3.1 million AIDS deaths worldwide.
South Africa continues to have the highest absolute number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the world with over 5.5 million people infected. In 2003 the national antenatal prevalence reached 25%iii rising to 29.5% today.iv 456 700 adult deaths were officially notified in 2003, a 40% rise in mortality within five years. Deaths among people aged 15 and over increased by 62% between 1997 and 2002, with AIDS believed to be largely responsible for this trend.