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South Africa experienced a 57 percent jump in reported deaths between 1997 and 2003, revealing the impact of HIV/AIDS.
The long awaited Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) study, 'Mortality and Causes of Death in South Africa', noted that in 2001 TB had claimed the lives of 37,917 people aged between 15 and 49, while HIV/AIDS had claimed only 7,564. There is, however, consensus that there is a link between HIV/AIDS and TB and that many of those people who had died of TB could have been HIV positive.
Stats SA officials said AIDS-related diseases, such as tuberculosis, influenza or pneumonia, were often recorded as the cause of death on the death certificate, complicating efforts to establish how many deaths were attributable to HIV/AIDS.
Another report ‘Identifying deaths from AIDS in South Africa’ published in the journal AIDS by Medical Research Council (MRC) and University of Cape Town (UCT) researchers confirms that there has been a massive increase in AIDS deaths in South Africa.
The study shows explicitly that HIV had become the largest cause of death (as indicated on death certificates) in women by 2001 and that a pattern of mortality had emerged in which young adults (aged 15-49) were dying in increasingly large numbers relative to the rest of the population.
To read the full Stats SA report click here
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