JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - 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) showed 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 some 5.5 million HIV-positive people out of a total population of some 45 million, giving it an estimated overall prevalence rate of about 11 percent and one of the worst AIDS caseloads in the world.
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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.
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Overall, the richest third of South Africa’s population still has a lower estimated HIV-prevalence than the poorest third, at 8.5 percent compared to 23.4 percent.
But the study said new infections were increasing most rapidly in this demographic, rising by 39 percent between 2002-2005 against only a 14 percent increase for their poorest compatriots.
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Topic: AIDS Rising Among S.Africa’s Rich, Best-Educated (Read 2157 times)