The latest twist in the South African government's sometimes tortured search for the truth about AIDS has just appeared. It is a report commissioned by the Cabinet from Stats South Africa - the body responsible for national statistics - on the extent of mortality from AIDS.
The headline figure is that less than 9% of all deaths in the country are currently caused by AIDS. Such a figure stands in apparent contrast to the findings of the South African Medical Research Council in September last year that 40% of all deaths in the country were due to HIV.
Statistics South Africa say that in 2001 8.7% of all deaths in the country were due to AIDS, a figure which a spokesperson said effectively “repudiated” last year’s MRC report. President Mbeki is reported by the South African Press Association as saying that deaths because of AIDS were “being exaggerated.”
However, the Statistics South Africa report found that HIV is the leading cause of mortality amongst South African women aged 15 to 39, causing nearly 10% of deaths, and that between 1997 and 2001 AIDS related mortality in the country nearly doubled from 4.6% to 8.7% of all deaths.
The South African MRC has reacted calmly to the latest statistics, with consultant David Bourne saying that estimating AIDS mortality was never “an exact science”, adding “the results of both reports are in line with broad emerging trends. HIV as an underlying cause of death is certainly rising and is predominantly among the young.”
Moreover, the reports used different modeling techniques and Bourne said that many deaths in the cabinet report attributed to influenza were likely to have HIV as their underlying cause.
Any satisfaction which the South African cabinet is taking from the latest statistics is likely to have been tempered by comments from the managing director of the World Bank in South Africa. Mamphele Ramphele, who is also a medical doctor, is reported by Reuters as saying that South Africa’s response to HIV has been a “tragedy” that would “rob the country of its international credibility."