THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF

AIDS IN AFRICA

Most scientists believe AIDS began in Africa (see card 61) because in Africa proportionately more people test HIV-positive than on other continents, because AIDS occurs there at a rate 100 times that of the U.S. or Europe, because the first Westerners to contract AIDS had sojourned in Africa, and because the oldest blood sample containing HIV antibodies was collected in Africa in 1959.

Almost 2/3 of the world's people with AIDS are African, and the disease is expected to disable or kill 20% of the African work force within 20 years. 80% of the estimated 10 million Africans expected

to have died of AIDS by the year 2000 will be heterosexual. Almost all the remaining 20% will be infants infected by HIV in the womb. So far, government-sponsored programs encouraging condom use have not succeeded in turning this deadly tide. Social scientists account for the vast presence of AIDS in Africa by citing customs such as polygamy and the old tribal practice of "lobola," or wife purchase, under which women are treated as chattel. This is coupled with increased industrialization which causes men to migrate to cities, where they acquire HIV through contact with prostitutes, and return home infected. Among a broad segment of traditional African women a wife will not refuse to have sex with her husband or demand that he wear a condom, even if she knows that he carries HIV, because her refusal would mean becoming a social outcast. In Africa, where AIDS is called the "slim" disease, the time span from infection to death is shorter than in more developed regions. Economic factors such as widespread malnutrition and the limited availability of health care contribute to this accelerated death rate. Next Card 79: The Demographics of AIDS IN EUROPE

AIDS IN AFRICA