Global AIDS - South Africa

Mandela rallies world for AIDS fight – BBC report - July, 2003

The former South African leader, Nelson Mandela, has urged the world to fight the “terrible and threatening scourge” of HIV/AIDS, describing the disease as “no less than a war, a world war that affects all of us ultimately”.

Mr Mandela told a London audience that HIV/AIDS represented a tragedy of unprecedented proportions, unfolding particularly in Africa, but spread across the whole globe.

“AIDS today in Africa is claiming more lives than the sum total of all wars, famines and floods, and the ravages of such deadly diseases as malaria.”

“It is devastating families and communities, overwhelming and depleting health care services and robbing schools of both students and teachers”.

HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa

• 29.4m people live with HIV/AIDS
• 3.5m new infections in 2002
• 2.4m Africans died in 2002 alone
• 10m youths (15-24) live with HIV
• 3m children under 15 live with HIV
• 12m AIDS orphans