HIV/AIDS in South Africa - History of HIV/AIDS in South Africa

History of HIV/AIDS in South Africa

In 1983, AIDS was diagnosed for the first time in two patients in South Africa. The first recorded death owing to AIDS occurred in 1983. By 1986, there were 46 recorded AIDS diagnoses. Estimates from 2000 indicated that 5% of actual infections and only 1% of actual deaths due to AIDS were reported prior to 1990. Prior to 1990, AIDS was more common among homosexual people. By 1990, less than 1% of South Africans had AIDS. By 1996, the figure stood at around 3% and by 1999 the figure had reached 10%. AIDS infection started reaching pandemic proportions around 1995.

Read more about this topic:  HIV/AIDS In South Africa

Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, aids, south and/or africa:

    We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)

    It is my conviction that women are the natural orators of the race.
    Eliza Archard Connor, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 9, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)

    Both the Moral Majority, who are recycling medieval language to explain AIDS, and those ultra-leftists who attribute AIDS to some sort of conspiracy, have a clearly political analysis of the epidemic. But even if one attributes its cause to a microorganism rather than the wrath of God, or the workings of the CIA, it is clear that the way in which AIDS has been perceived, conceptualized, imagined, researched and financed makes this the most political of diseases.
    Dennis Altman (b. 1943)

    There were metal detectors on the staff-room doors and Hernandez usually had a drawer full of push-daggers, nunchuks, stun-guns, knucks, boot-knives, and whatever else the detectors had picked up. Like Friday morning at a South Miami high school.
    William Gibson (b. 1948)

    “I’ll love you dear, I’ll love you
    Till China and Africa meet,
    And the river jumps over the mountain
    And the salmon sing in the street.
    —W.H. (Wystan Hugh)