September 8 1999. Copyright 1999. Graphic News. All rights reserved.

SOUTH AFRICAÕS MINERS FACE WORST AIDS RISK

LONDON, September 8, Graphic News: SOUTH AFRICAN industry has been slow to spot the threat of AIDS and faces an astronomical bill if it ignores the disease that infects 1,600 people in the country every day, according to healthcare providers.
Up to five million of South AfricaÕs 43 million citizens will be HIV-positive by 2005, by which time AIDS will have orphaned more than one million children.
ÒThis situation has all the ingredients of a financial disaster, as HIV/AIDS could decimate scheme reserves and make Ôhealthcare for allÕ unaffordable,Ó warned Adrian Baskir, actuary at Old Mutual health insurers.
He estimated that the cost of the disease will reach 23 billion rand ($3.8 billion) a year by 2009 for the health industry Ð up from 1.5 billion rand ($250 million) in 1998 Ð if nothing is done to manage the risk.
The rate of HIV infection, the virus which causes AIDS, is worst in South AfricaÕs mining industry, where most workers live in single-sex hostels and the virus spreads easily through prostitution.
HIV infection among miners is up to 17 percent higher than in other population groups and threatens to kill 50,000 of the countryÕs 500,000 miners a year.
ÒAIDS is becoming a long-term care issue, rather than a dying issue,Ó said Baskir, citing evidence from the United States, where 40,000 Americans are infected each year, many in their teens and early 20s.
A recent study of mineworkers in the Carletonville area, home to South AfricaÕs biggest gold mines, showed up to 75 percent of prostitutes in the area were infected with HIV.
ÒIt is clear that the conditions of minersÕ lives are ideally suited to the spread of HIV both at the mines and in their rural homes,Ó said Brian Williams, a research scientist at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.
South Africa is the worldÕs leading miner of gold and platinum and a major producer of coal and base metals. The gold sector is the countryÕs biggest earner of foreign exchange.
/ENDS
Sources: Reuters, World Health Organization