Demographic impact of AIDS in Africa : an issue brief

In Africa, unlike in other regions, the predominant mode of transmission of the AIDS virus has been heterosexual intercourse, and has been for over a decade. This has led to a continent-wide epidemic of a proportion unmatched in any other area of the world. Widespread efforts to prevent transmission, by increasing the use of condoms and other safe sexual practices and by improving the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, have met with only varying degrees of success. This report presents calculations on the long-term consequences of AIDS. These calculations center around four crucial issues: the effect that AIDS will have on population growth rates in general; the impact of the disease on improvements made thus far in child survival, such as declining infant mortality rates; the extent to which the number of AIDS orphans will continue to increase, and how this increase will influence dependency ratios of African populations; and the impact on productivity levels of both urban and rural economies, given that the uniformly fatal disease commonly strikes young adults, who account for the large segment of the workforce. (Author abstract, modified)