KZN accounts for third of HIV infections

KWAZULU-NATAL Provincial Administration reports 298 new HIV infections daily and they account for a third of the 1 000 new infections countrywide.

This is according to the latest South Africa Survey, published by the South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR) in Johannesburg last week.
The survey is the annual yearbook on all social, economic, and political aspects of South Africa that the IRR has been publishing since 1946.

The data used was obtained from a Department of Health (DoH) publication entitled ‘The 2011 National Antenatal Sentinel HIV and Syphilis Prevalence Survey in South Africa’.

In 2011 KwaZulu-Natal had 108 594 new infections, 8 961 (8%) of which were accounted for by those under the age of 15 and in total, some 1.1% of the province’s population was newly infected with HIV that year.
Following KwaZulu-Natal was Gauteng with 71 637 new infections – the equivalent of 196 daily and of the new infections
5 912 (8%) were accounted for by children.

There were only 9 537 new infections in the Western Cape, which translates to 26 new infections daily and 787 (8%) were new child infections.
In the whole country, there were 352 360 new infections in 2011, some 29 068 (8%) of which were child infections.
People who were newly infected in 2011 accounted for 0.7% of South Africa’s population.