A report released today by the HSRC gives an unequivocal cost to South Africa of their government’s ambivalent approach to dealing with HIV / AIDS.

The incidence rate of infection is given at 1.4% of the population per year.  For the latest figures available, 2005, that equates to 571 000 new infections added to the current total of those already living with the virus.  34% of infections occur in the productive 15 – 24 year age group.

‘These findings suggest that the current prevention campaigns do not have the desired impact, particularly among young women’, concluded Professor Thomas Rehle, Director in the Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS and Health research programme at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC).

So, not only is the government doing little to pay attention to the problem, but the money spent on large-scale education programs is also achieving little by way of awareness and responsibility.

South Africa launched a five-year HIV/AIDS strategy in late 2006, vowing to cut new infections and deliver treatment and support to at least 80 percent of millions of its people infected with HIV by 2011.

Nomonde Xundu, the health ministry's chief director for HIV/AIDS, said the plan set an ambitious target of enrolling one million South Africans on anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs by 2011 - up from about 200 000 now.

"We originally discussed a target of about 650 000 people on ARVs by 2011, but then people said perhaps we should push that a little further, to about a million or so," she said.

The cost of the plan is estimated at $ 3.3 billion.  Yet it will still fall terribly short of the overall need. 

An estimated 5 million South Africans are HIV positive.