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1 - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2011

Salim S Abdool Karim
Affiliation:
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Cheryl Baxter
Affiliation:
University of KwaZulu-Natal
S. S. Abdool Karim
Affiliation:
University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Q. Abdool Karim
Affiliation:
University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
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Summary

THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE infected with HIV worldwide has increased exponentially from just a handful of cases in the early 1980s to about 33 million by the end of 2007 and more than 20 million people have already died of AIDS. Catastrophically, the extent of its impact turned out to be far worse than ever predicted.

In South Africa, the early phase of the epidemic was restricted to just a few hundred cases among men who have sex with men and persons receiving unsafe blood transfusions. However, by the early 1990s, heterosexual transmission came to dominate as the mode of spread of hiv infection, and with it, the concomitant hiv epidemic in newborns and young children through perinatal transmission. South Africa now is the country estimated to have the largest number of people (5.3 million hiv positive people as at December 2007) living with hiv/Aids. Despite this, the South African response to the hiv epidemic over the past decade has been characterised by a unique form of denialism in the highest echelons of political power. However, with the change in government following the 2009 elections, together with heartening progress on the South African government's national antiretroviral rollout programme, there is renewed optimism that South Africa can turn the tide of the epidemic.

AIDS epidemic first identified in USA

The report published by the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (cdc) in June of 1981 was the first to take note of the disease and marked the beginning of awareness of the epidemic potential of aids in the usa.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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