Aids slashes SA life expectancy
The HIV/Aids pandemic has slashed up to seven years of healthy life expectancy off the average South African life.
NEWBORN South African baby can expect an average of 40 healthy years. That's the grim news from researchers, as the HIV/Aids pandemic slashes up to seven years of healthy life expectancy off the average South African life.
Next to Sierra Leone, Malawi and Namibia, South Africa ranks as one of the lowest in the world in terms of life expectancy. In Japan, whose people have the highest expected lifespan in the world, a newborn infant can expect to live in full health for up to 75 years. This presents a shocking contrast to countries like Sierra Leone, where the figure stands at just below 30.
Experts have blamed this dramatic drop, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, on the spiralling increase in HIV/Aids-related infections and deaths. The region is the worst hit globally, with sectors such as education, the economy and the military set to suffer a severe knocking. The epidemic, unlike other diseases that fell the old and very young, cuts down predominantly the youthful, fertile and economically active sectors of the population.
A recently released International Labour Organisation (ILO) report estimates that the South African labour force will be reduced by up to 17% in the next 20 years.
Although the link between mortality rate -- the average age of deaths -- and life expectancy is a close one, there is a significant difference between the age at which people are dying, and the number of healthy, illness- and disease-free years a person can expect to live. Simply put, healthy life expectancy is the average number of "problem-free" years a person can expect to live, without being cut down by poor health, illness or disability.
But HIV/Aids is knocking years off both.
According to the head of the epidemology and burden of disease unit at the World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr Alan Lopez, South Africans "can expect to live a shorter number of healthy years than most other countries in the world".
Emphasising that the figures would necessarily need to be qualified solely in terms of "healthy" years, Lopez attributes the drop in life expectancy to HIV/Aids, but says there are other contributory factors such as deaths and disability related to pregnancy and childbirth, and sexually transmitted diseases, given their close association with both HIV/Aids and illness and disability affecting fertility.
He added it was necessary to include the role played by injuries -- under which killings, accidents and suicides would fall -- in bringing down the South African life expectancy average.
The effect of these factors would mean that people will be "alive, but sick, disabled or injured".
-- The Mail & Guardian, June 9 2000. |
