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	Report says AIDs leading cause of death in South Africa

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) - AIDS is now South Africa's leading cause of death and the disease accounted for 40 percent of all those who died last year between the ages of 15 and 49, a local newspaper reported Sunday. The Sunday Times, citing a South Africa Medical Research Council report that has not yet been released, forecasts that as many as six million South Africans might die from AIDS by 2010.

The newspaper said that the report projects a threefold increase in deaths among children aged between one and five by 2010 if no effective preventive policies are put in place.

"The number of AIDS deaths is expected to rise to double the number of deaths attributed to all other causes," the Sunday Times said. It added that the report saw population growth halting because of the epidemic.

The report was published almost a week after reports that President Thabo Mbeki, who has attracted a storm of controversy for questioning the link between HIV and AIDS, once again stated that AIDS was not the biggest killer in the country. In a letter to his minister of health, published in the Business Day newspaper Monday, Mbeki said HIV/AIDS was only attributable to 2.2 percent of total deaths in South Africa.

The figures that Mbeki cited were compiled by the United Nations World Health Organization in 1995.

The HIV virus that causes AIDS is believed to have infected over 20 percent of the country's adult population. The epidemic has been linked to rising poverty and crime as it kills off breadwinners and leaves an army of impoverished orphans.
 

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