   |
|
afrol.com/AENS, 16 February - Malawi's most important social services, including the country's army, face collapse within the next four years when an estimated 25 percent of government officials begin dying of HIV/Aids. A new international study by the London-based PANOS Institute indicates that between 25 and 50 percent of officials employed in Malawi's army, as well as the country's vital education and health departments, are already HIV positive and will die within four years. The study, entitled "HIV and Men In Malawi", was released in the commercial capital Blantyre on Friday. Authors Martin Foreman and Thomas Scalway claim in it that Malawi's public health care system is already swamped by the pandemic with up to 70 percent of hospital beds occupied by HIV positive patients. The growing impact of HIV related deaths has also driven up government's health spending in the army and civil service by an estimated 50 percent, diminishing the amount of money available for normal public services and infrastructure development. - With over 70 percent of hospital beds in the country occupied by people with HIV, it costs up to R5 000 to take care of just one person with AIDS. That is equivalent to the average income for a Malawian for four years. A growing budget deficit in the public health service is forcing individuals and families to care for HIV positive relatives at home, the report reads. Even those HIV positive adults who are able to continue working suffer a marked decrease in productivity, working more slowly and forced to take increasing amounts of time off to fight the disease. Additional economic costs include spiralling funeral and foster care expenses. "Between 25 and 50 percent of [people] in the military, education and health care may die of AIDS by 2005," the report warns. Both government and the private sector is already experiencing problems training replacements for HIV positive staff, with no predictions yet on the affect of an expected 'brain drain' will have on the economy as significant numbers of Malawi's most economically active citizens die. PANOS does predict, however, that Malawi's gross domestic product will drop by at least 10 percent by 2010 as a direct result of HIV deaths. Researchers also warn that social taboos surrounding the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases are fuelling the spread of HIV/Aids because they mask the pandemic's symptoms and also make it easier for STD victims to contract HIV through ruptured genital skin. Health authorities treat 500,000 STD cases every year, but believe that at least twice that number seek treatment from traditional healers or simply "suffer in silence". Rural women are most at risk, because they are denied education and seldom seek assistance for sexual or other ailments. "Shame, poverty, limited access, illiteracy and a lack of information all inhibit [people] from seeking treatment. And even when people do visit clinics, the appropriate drugs may not be available," the report notes. Slightly over 760,000 Malawians between the ages of 15 and 49 were living with HIV/Aids by the end of 1999, while an estimated 40,000 children also had the virus. Over 390,000 children have lost at least one parent to HIV/Aids since the pandemic was first diagnosed in Malawi in the mid 1980s and an additional 70,000 are orphaned each year. National Aids Control Programme (NACP) and UNAIDS statistics show that almost all the adult HIV/Aids cases in Malawi are the result of sexual transmission, with most child cases contracted in the womb or from breastmilk. The latest figures also indicate that more women, or some 420 000 people, than men are HIV positive. Women also tend to contract HIV at a younger age than men, with one in five HIV positive women developing full-blown AIDS before they are 25 years old. Only one HIV positive man in twelve develops AIDS at the same age. Women between the ages of 15 and 19 are five times more likely to contract HIV/Aids than men of the same age. By Brian Ligomeka, African Eye News Service (AENS)
|
