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I'll have to follow on and post the "IGNORANT" tag on most of these.
Africans have an inherent distrust of western medicine and policies. Any attempts at chastity smacks of christian exploitation and any attempt at condom use is misinterpreted as a policy of reducing numbers of black people.
Most of the deaths are assumed statistics. They won't know if Johnny in the remote village died of Aids related or natural TB without testing. Johnny's dead, so it's not worth testing.
They used to test all pregnant women admitted to Baragwanath hospital in Johannesburg until the numbers got to about 40% of all mothers being found positive. After that, it was considered to expensive to continue and every mother was from then on considered and treated as though HIV positive.
South Africa is the only country in the world where women can buy rape insurance in order to pay for the AZTcocktails to be taken after rape and suspected HIV positive sex. Think about what stats are required for a company to actually offer a policy like that.
African men are not considered or treated as adults until their ritual circumcision. This is done with other boys who have been living in the bush for about a month. all in the same ceremony. All with the same knife.
You might be a degreed professional who practices safe sex, but because johnny next to you got HIV a week ago, you're at risk because you need to be considerd a 'man' before you can marry a girl from a family of decent social standing within your tribe.
Many african men are expected to prove their fertility by fathering a child with another woman before expecting permission to marry.
Children are seen as wealth in a land where there are no pension or welfare schemes.
Many villages have been decimated by HIV along trucking routes through african countries. The drivers stop off in towns and have a 'girlfriend' at each one they prefer to stop at. The pay with gifts or other products. The 'girlfriends' have many of these visitors.
I had a transfusion in South Africa when I was 14. I lost a lot of blood after an appendectomy when the drip tube came out of the needle. I cannot donate blood in the UK. I would need a very comprehensive blood test before marrying in the US or getting life insurance to apply for a mortgage in the US too.
When I worked in Tranksei (Xhosa homeland) before the end of apartheid era, it was estimated that 1/3 of the student body at the University of Transkei was HIV+. This is the future of Africa.
However, on a very interesting point:
My girlfriend's dad runs an AIDS orphanage in South Africa to cater to the children that are cast out of their communities after their parents die. Most kids die from AIDS related infections before reaching their teens, but this is the surprising bit.
It seems that the numbers are changing. With sufficient help and good food and environment that encourages survival, a lot of these kids are sero-converting, where they have antibodies in their system (Which would set off a positive in most tests) but are NOT actually HIV virus positive. Just as if they had been innocculated.
(eg: most of us are have gone through a seroconversion of measles if we received the vaccine as children.)
This fact is gaining a LOT of attention from western medical companies.
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