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- OTTAWA (CP) -- The global
AIDS
epidemic is taking such a large toll in Africa that it will measurably
slow world population growth, says a report by the Worldwatch
Institute.
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- The report reflects a change in thinking by demographers.
Previous studies concluded that AIDS would not significantly affect global
population.
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- It was expected that world population growth would slow
due to
an international effort to provide better health care and family
planning. But the spectacular rise in African mortality rates has been
a surprise.
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- "This is new in terms of its effect on world demographic
trends," Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based research
organization, said in an interview. "People are now talking about
child-headed households becoming common (in sub-Saharan
Africa)."
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- The report says some countries, such as Botswana, South
Africa
and Zimbabwe, will lose one fifth or more of their adult population
within the next decade unless a low-cost cure for AIDS is found.
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- When UN demographers
updated their population projections
last October, they reduced the
projected global population for 2050 to
8.9 billion from 9.4 billion --
a drop of 500 million.
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- Of this drop, two thirds was due to falling fertility
and improved family planning. One third was due to rising mortality from
AIDS.
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- The
epidemic is especially devastating because it does
not normally claim
the weak and the old, but people in the prime of life.
In Zimbabwe,
which had been seen as a model of economic development, life
expectancy
has fallen to 44 years from 60 years in 1990, says the report.
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- Food security is
being affected in rural areas due to
a lack of labour in the fields.
The number of able-bodied workers is reduced
not only by deaths and
sickness but also by the need for those who are
well to care for the
sick.
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- In
South Africa, 70 per cent of the beds in some hospitals
are occupied by
AIDS victims, says the report. At the University of Durban-Westville,
25 per cent of the student body is HIV positive. "In Africa, it
is often the better educated, more socially mobile populations that have
the highest infection rate. Africa is losing the agronomists, the
engineers
and the teachers it needs to sustain its economic
development."
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- Brown said there are few programs to combat the epidemic,
and
most African governments are overwhelmed. Infection rates are still
rising. Partof the inability to confront the trends stems from faltering
international support for family planning. "The same reproductive
health services and the same condoms that help lower birth rates also
check
the spread of the virus. "Unless governments can mobilize
quickly
to contain the virus, the epidemic could claim more lives in
the early
part of the new century than World War Two did in this
one."
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