Where have all the Swazis gone? Did AIDS kill them?

[Hail Columbia]

http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=21144&

MATSAPHA, SWAZILAND -- Stephanie Nolen writes in the Globe & Mail, Toronto, Canada:

"Demographer Prof. Solomon Dlamini decided the numbers were wrong: the preliminary results of their latest national census emography and statistics made him believe that the bureaucrats had made a terrible error.

The census, a door-to-door count through all of this country's hilly villages, found only 912,229 Swazis. That was 300,000 less Swazis than had been projected by demographers 20 years ago.

The CIA factbook on Swaziland still shows its population as being more than 1-mllion: at 1,133,066.

So where have all the Swazis gone?

Its government has not finalised the results of this latest census, but if the figure holds, it would mean that the country is 300,000 people below what was projected as the likely rate of growth 20 years ago, according to the Globe and Mail.

The population grew by more than 200,000 people from 1986 to 1997, said Dlamini, head of the national university's department of demography and statistics.

"But it's the period between these two censuses (1997 and 2007) when the [ HIV and Aids] epidemic reached its apex."

Swaziland recently surpassed Botswana as the country with the world's highest known rates of HIV/AIDS infection. At least 26% of the adults, 49% of young women aged 25 to 29; and 43% of pregnant women are now identified with the HIV-virus.

According to the Globe and Mail, the population decline could be attributed both to people dying of Aids-related conditions and because HIV infection lowers the number of children women have.

"I don't think anybody quite realised what the depth of HIV-AIDS would be in Swaziland," said Derek von Wissell, director of the National Emergency Response Council on HIV-AIDS."Even if they undercounted by 10 percent, we're down 25 percent from where we should be."

Amos Zwane, Swaziland's senior statistician, wrote in his preliminary report on the census that "a population decline or stagnation was not expected and this result is most surprising."

He said that his office is going to search for a logical explanation and will not speculate on the cause until it produces final numbers in the middle of 2008.

According to the Globe and Mail, a "toxic mix" of factors has fuelled the country's HIV epidemic:

1. There was 'a highly virulent strain of the disease circulating among residents";

2. The culture "condones, even encourages" promiscuity and polygamy among men;
The example is set by King MSWATI III, their "playboy" king with an "ever-expanding stable" of wives. Although UK-educated, he denies the magnitude of the AIDS-problem, Nolen writes.

3. This male-dominated culture also denies women any rights to negotiate condom use to prevent STDs;

4. Swaziland's "limited economy" relies on sending men to work in South Africa for long periods of time; Surrounded by South Africa, except for a short border with Mozambique, Swaziland is heavily dependent on SA. It receives more than nine-tenths of its imports from SA and sends 60% of its exports - although there is a booming illegal 'mule-'trade in indigenous marijuna plant, smuggled abroad through Indian-ocean harbours such as Durban.

In addition, the country's understaffed and underfunded health system could not treat people when the epidemic hit in the 1990s.

Thus "achingly slow progress" was made in getting antiretroviral drugs to those in need, the Globe and Mail reports.

Only about one-third of all the Swazis who need antiretroviral drugs to postpone their AIDS-deaths are actually getting them at the moment.

However Nolen also cites Rob Dorrington, a professor of actuarial science at the University of Cape Town, as saying that he was skeptical of census data through experience.

"It is not unusual for there to be an undercount of children and of men [in a census], and deaths would have to have been implausibly high, given the estimated level of prevalence, for one to be able to detect this through the change in the numbers counted by the census."

[crazyhorse]

http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=21144&

MATSAPHA, SWAZILAND -- Stephanie Nolen writes in the Globe & Mail, Toronto, Canada:

"Demographer Prof. Solomon Dlamini decided the numbers were wrong: the preliminary results of their latest national census emography and statistics made him believe that the bureaucrats had made a terrible error.

The census, a door-to-door count through all of this country's hilly villages, found only 912,229 Swazis. That was 300,000 less Swazis than had been projected by demographers 20 years ago.

The CIA factbook on Swaziland still shows its population as being more than 1-mllion: at 1,133,066.

So where have all the Swazis gone?

Its government has not finalised the results of this latest census, but if the figure holds, it would mean that the country is 300,000 people below what was projected as the likely rate of growth 20 years ago, according to the Globe and Mail.

The population grew by more than 200,000 people from 1986 to 1997, said Dlamini, head of the national university's department of demography and statistics.

"But it's the period between these two censuses (1997 and 2007) when the [ HIV and Aids] epidemic reached its apex."

Swaziland recently surpassed Botswana as the country with the world's highest known rates of HIV/AIDS infection. At least 26% of the adults, 49% of young women aged 25 to 29; and 43% of pregnant women are now identified with the HIV-virus.

According to the Globe and Mail, the population decline could be attributed both to people dying of Aids-related conditions and because HIV infection lowers the number of children women have.

"I don't think anybody quite realised what the depth of HIV-AIDS would be in Swaziland," said Derek von Wissell, director of the National Emergency Response Council on HIV-AIDS."Even if they undercounted by 10 percent, we're down 25 percent from where we should be."

Amos Zwane, Swaziland's senior statistician, wrote in his preliminary report on the census that "a population decline or stagnation was not expected and this result is most surprising."

He said that his office is going to search for a logical explanation and will not speculate on the cause until it produces final numbers in the middle of 2008.

According to the Globe and Mail, a "toxic mix" of factors has fuelled the country's HIV epidemic:

1. There was 'a highly virulent strain of the disease circulating among residents";

2. The culture "condones, even encourages" promiscuity and polygamy among men;
The example is set by King MSWATI III, their "playboy" king with an "ever-expanding stable" of wives. Although UK-educated, he denies the magnitude of the AIDS-problem, Nolen writes.

3. This male-dominated culture also denies women any rights to negotiate condom use to prevent STDs;

4. Swaziland's "limited economy" relies on sending men to work in South Africa for long periods of time; Surrounded by South Africa, except for a short border with Mozambique, Swaziland is heavily dependent on SA. It receives more than nine-tenths of its imports from SA and sends 60% of its exports - although there is a booming illegal 'mule-'trade in indigenous marijuna plant, smuggled abroad through Indian-ocean harbours such as Durban.

In addition, the country's understaffed and underfunded health system could not treat people when the epidemic hit in the 1990s.

Thus "achingly slow progress" was made in getting antiretroviral drugs to those in need, the Globe and Mail reports.

Only about one-third of all the Swazis who need antiretroviral drugs to postpone their AIDS-deaths are actually getting them at the moment.

However Nolen also cites Rob Dorrington, a professor of actuarial science at the University of Cape Town, as saying that he was skeptical of census data through experience.

"It is not unusual for there to be an undercount of children and of men [in a census], and deaths would have to have been implausibly high, given the estimated level of prevalence, for one to be able to detect this through the change in the numbers counted by the census."

Probably those who have not died of aids related illnesses have run  off to mandela's rainbow nation to seek their fame and fortune as whores, rapists, murderers, hijackers, child rapists and common petty thieves, some are  probably in the employ of the government killing white farmers.