Aids Claims 800,000 South African Voters

[Champ]

Rampholo Molefhe
CAPE TOWN

About 800 000 people affected by HIV/AIDS will have missed out when the final election results are announced in South Africa.

Estimates by IDASA, a South African based independent institute that watches democratic performance said the 800 000 included dead people who would have been eligible to vote, some who were too sick to register, and others who might have been too sick to turn up on voting day.

It was expected that there would also be a number of those who would not vote because they were caring for sick people.

The South African Electoral Commission tried to reduce the number of those who would miss the elections on account of infirmity or sickness. By Monday voting was opened for 93 000 people with disabilities who had registered for special voting.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200404160614.html

[Catherine Vincent]

1. Are there any researchers on Aids in Africa at DU?

I really would like to know if the South Africans (and other African nations for that matter) died of other diseases at a high rate before Aids came into existance. Such as cancer, cardiac arrest, strokes etc.

[seemslikeadream]

2. The reason for the death in Africa

is gold and oil with the help of mercenaries.


And remember he is just getting started


Every death creates new enemies

http://www.bushflash.com/pax.html




Dogs of War
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=9558&mesg_id=9558

[mobuto]

4. Violence is certainly a huge problem

But its not the "reason" for AIDS or malaria or TB or sleeping sickness or any of the other infectious killers in sub Saharan Africa, even if it does contribute to their spread.

[seemslikeadream]

5. I realize that but

with the never ending violence little will be done to alleviate the health problems of Africa. That's all I meant. The war in Congo has claimed the lives of 3.5 million souls there since 1998.

[mobuto]

6. I agree completely

Of course the two feed on one another. Political instability makes it much harder to combat infectious disease epidemics, but then infectious disease epidemics, especially AIDS, are one of the leading contributors to that political instability. AIDS is depopulating huge parts of sub Saharan Africa and that just destroys everything.

Vicious cycle.

[seemslikeadream]

7. depopulating

That seems to be the ultimate goal, no matter how it's done.

From: Eliza Griswold
Subject: Amuzati Returns to the Scene of the Massacre
Tuesday, March 23, 2004, at 11:19 AM PT




Long isolated in central Africa's dense jungles, pygmies are susceptible to disease in urban environments

Today, Amuzati reluctantly agrees to take me, Marcus the photographer, and Orib, our translator, to the massacre site. He hasn't returned to the jungle village of Difoho since the attack. We set off with a dozen or so pygmies in the back of our truck. Pygmies love to ride, I am told. It's both a status symbol and a novelty for them. If you don't insist they get down after a few hours, they'll let you drive them days away from home. As we drive past a group of Bantus, they call out teasing, "Oh look, here comes the project for short people!" The truck we've rented belongs to an NGO: Programme Assistance Pygmées de Beni. People call pygmies goats or monkeys—they're less than human here.

After several hours, we stop at a gold-mining village called 26. It's 26 kilometers south of the town of Mambasa, where Operation Effacer Le Tableau reached its bloodiest apex. Like the pygmies, the Bantus here have recently come back to the forest. The road is pitted with chest-deep holes where they have begun mining gold again. The miners stare at us: Two Muzungus—white people—led by a natty pygmy (he's now in gold-rimmed sunglasses) as well as Amuzati's wife and his bodyguards armed with bows and arrows trailing behind us.

more
http://slate.msn.com/id/2097314/entry/2097323/

[Muddleoftheroad]

8. Where is the UN?

They do a horrendous job with Africa.

[mobuto]

3. I'm not a researcher

and I don't have figures in front of me, but my understanding is that cancer, heart-disease, strokes, etc. are diseases of the rich. People in poor, developing nations are unlikely to live long enough to die of what kills us in Ameria. They're much more likely to die of infectious diseases. In South Africa, the most developed country in sub Saharan Africa, the last time I checked infectious diseases accounted for more deaths than heart disease, strokes and cancer combined.

[Catherine Vincent]

9. Thank you for your reply.

I was just wondering because it seems everytime I read a newspaper or the internet I get all of these number of Africans that have died of aids. I'm not into conspiracies that much but my guess is because a lot of these people are uneducated about aids and are poor, then aids would befall them for sure.

[Lisa]

10. report: Causes of Death in South Africa

I'm not an AIDS researcher or Africa expert, but I work with a couple of people who are. Here's an interesting report on the South African situation. Stats are hard to obtain in some parts of Africa because records aren't always kept up to date (and in the AIDS situation, deaths may be attributed to other causes because people are reluctant to acknowledge the name of the disease).


http://www.pmg.org.za/docs/2003/viewminute.php?id=2706
http://www.afroaidsinfo.org/content/research/epidemiology/causesofdeath.pdf


p.s. what Mobuto said -- exactly so -- countries which have not passed what population/disease researchers call the "epidemiological transition" have markedly different causes of death from industrialized countries like the US and Canada. This is based on the "demographic transition model", which used the example of Western Europe to predict that societies move from having high birth rates and high death rates, to a decrease in death rates due to better medical technology and public health initiatives, etc., during industrialization. The population booms. Gradually, the birth rate also begins to drop, due to better education and economic security. (This is happening in many developing countries right now ... by the middle of the century most women in the world will not be having more than 3 kids, and in many cases fewer than that.) Both of these "transition" models have been critiqued, but the general conclusions are pretty well accepted.

In countries that haven't made the transition yet, life expectancy tends to be shorter and infant mortality a lot higher, due to infectious diseases like cholera and dysentery, and malnutrition (which even if it isn't fatal can make people more susceptible to illnesses). In post-industrial countries, most of the problems tend to be due to lifestyles -- e.g. smoking, or eating too much of the wrong kind of food.