South African HIV Cases Fall Slightly To 5.4M, But New Infections Continue To Outpace Prevention Efforts

“The number of people living with HIV in South Africa has dropped slightly to 5.38 million, and the number of AIDS deaths is finally starting to fall, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe said Thursday … in a written reply to a question from parliament, where lawmakers had asked for an update on the success of the anti-AIDS fight,” Agence France-Presse reports. “South Africa has more HIV infections than any country in the world, previously estimated at 5.6 million by the United Nations in its global report on HIV in 2009, released late last year,” the news agency writes (8/25).

However, “[t]he rate of new infections continue[s] to outpace our prevention efforts, and thus prevention programs will be prioritized in the new national strategic plan which is being developed for 2012-2016,” Motlanthe said, Reuters reports (Roelf, 8/25). “Motlanthe’s response came several weeks after the end of a massive testing campaign that reached nearly 14 million people, two million of whom tested positive,” according to AFP (8/25).

The KFF Daily Global Health Policy Report summarized news and information on global health policy from hundreds of sources, from May 2009 through December 2020. All summaries are archived and available via search.

Tags

KFF Headquarters: 185 Berry St., Suite 2000, San Francisco, CA 94107 | Phone 650-854-9400
Washington Offices and Barbara Jordan Conference Center: 1330 G Street, NW, Washington, DC 20005 | Phone 202-347-5270

www.kff.org | Email Alerts: kff.org/email | facebook.com/KFF | twitter.com/kff

The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news, KFF is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California.