HIV/AIDS

"Compassionate health care in the service of Christ"

HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa    

The first reported cases of AIDS in South Africa were of two homosexual men in Johannesburg who died of the disease in 1982.  At that time the acronym for the disease was GRID (Gay-related Immune deficiency).  The name AIDS was only adopted in July 1982 in Washington, USA.   By 1990 there were more than 600 cases of AIDS reported in South Africa. It is thought that the main transport routes of Africa were responsible for bringing the virus, through sexual contact between truck drivers and the commercial sex workers along the main routes.   In that year, there were 270 AIDS related deaths, and 0.76% of pregnant women wereconfirmed HIV positive.  At that time South Africa was going through a major political transformation, and all attention was being paid to these events.  The AIDS figures went largely unnoticed.

In 1991, only  57 cases of the disease were reported to the World health organisation, the figure increasing to 225 for 1992 and 552 for 1993.  In 1994, the year of South Africa's first democratic election, the number of HIV+ people was estimated to be between 300 000 and 750 000.   This meant that 7.5% of the adult population was infected.   This catastrophic increase in infection has continued.  By the year 2000, AIDS had become the biggest sinlge cause of death in South Africa. By 2001, the prevalance rate was around 25%.

The Actuarial Society of South Africa has developed an AIDS and demographic model which can be used to project the impact of the disease nationally and in each province.  The HIV/AIDS epidemic can be considered as a series of "waves".  The first wave - new HIV infections - peaked in about 1998, at about 930 000 infections a year.  Next comes the wave of total HIV infections, projected to peak in about 2006 at about 7.5 million infections.  The next wave - of AIDS deaths - will peak soon after that in about 2010, at about 800 000 deaths a year.  This in turn will be followed by a wave of AIDS orphans.  This is expected to peak at about 1.85 million in about 2015.

For a larger version of this graph, click anywhere on the thumbnail to the left.

(This graph is courtesy of the Medical Research Council's report entitled "The impact of HIV/AIDS on adult mortality in South Africa", by Dorrington, Bourne, Bradshaw, Laubscher and Timaeus, 2001)

WHAT CATHCA IS DOING

The Catholic Church's response to the AIDS crisis takes many forms.  The Church engages in Prevention and Education Programmes, is training Home Based Caregivers, has opened hospices for the terminally ill and is caring for Orphans in Orphanages and in foster care settings.  All these activities are co-ordinated by the SACBC AIDS office, which can be found on the Bishops' Conference Web site http://www.sacbc.org.za    CATHCA, as represented by Catholic health care institutions throughout the country, takes part in all these efforts and encourages them, working closely with the AIDS office in providing training, help and funding for the many AIDS projects.   At present the AIDS office and CATHCA are working on a project to introduce Anti-Retroviral drugs to twelve pilot sites in 2004.  See the list of addresses in each Province for the names of projects in your area.