Deaths amongst South African teachers due to HIV/AIDS have rocketed by 40 percent in the past year, according to statistics compiled by the country's largest teachers' trade union, a newspaper report said Sunday.
The figures, based on claims submitted to the South African Democratic Teacher's Union's (SADTU) funeral scheme between June 2000 and May this year, have been accepted by an aide to country's Education Minister Kader Asmal, the Sunday Times reported.
The union, which represents 216,000 teachers, said statistics showed that
over a 12-month period, 1011 teachers had died due to the disease. Their average age was 39.
In the union's first study, over a 10-month period between August 1999 and May last year, 701 teacher deaths were recorded, with 320 of the victims aged between 30 and 39.
The study published in the union's newspaper, the Educators' Voice, reveals that although most deaths were recorded as "natural" because doctors are legally prevented from listing AIDS as a cause of death, most teachers have died of opportunistic infections.
These included tuberculosis, pneumonia, gastroenteritis, meningitis and cryptococcal meningitis, which are all AIDS-related.
A report asserting that AIDS has become the leading cause of death in South Africa was released earlier this month.
The report by the Medical Research Council (MRC), said about 40 percent of adult deaths in the 15-49-year age group last year were due to HIV/AIDS.
"It is estimated that AIDS accounted for 25 percent of all deaths in the year 2000 and has thus become the single biggest cause of death," the report said.
Some 4.7 million South Africans -- one in nine -- were HIV-positive at the end of 2000, in a country where the deadly disease is spreading at a rate of about 1,500 new infections daily -- AFP
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
