Talk:HIV/AIDS in South Africa

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This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

ME/HAR (Aug. 26, 2007). "S. Africa vandalizes Wikipedia HIV info". Press TV. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Wikipedia 10 years behind on updating HIV data in Africa

... latest reports refer to 2008/2009 as current.

According to Wikipedia, HIV/AIDS denialism suddenly ended in 2007. If that is the case, why there is still so much HIV in South Africa? Are there not enough HIV drugs or do people refuse to take the drugs or are they too expensive?

--91.159.189.62 (talk) 11:58, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

White South Africans with HIV

The number of 0.3% of whites in South Africa who are HIV positive seems inaccurate. I found various other sources, which state vastly different numbers:

1% http://www.economist.com/node/21550001

3% http://www.grocotts.co.za/content/middle-class-not-immune-hiv-26-07-2012

6% http://www.thebody.com/content/art9070.html

Another source stated "less than 1%" but cautions that "the figures for whites are considered unreliable because of the low response rate." "Black Africans (73.3%) and Coloureds (69.6%) were more likely to agree to HIV testing, whereas only 43.0% of whites and 54.0% of Indian or Asians agreed to be tested." http://www.hsrc.ac.za/uploads/pageContent/4565/SABSSM%20IV%20LEO%20final.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.45.6.127 (talk) 12:42, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

recent remarks

wasn't there someting recently about the MEC for health having referred to aids as being treatable by traditional tribal medicine and garlic??

It appears there's a great deal of relavant information not yet covered in this article:

"Discredited doctor's 'cure' for Aids ignites life-and-death struggle in South Africa," May 14, 2005, The Guardian [1]
"The drugs do work", September 5, 2006, The Guardian [2]

--Ronz 00:08, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the story I heard about. I'm going to try and integrate it into the article justnow. [3] Joshua John Lee 18:44, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Censorship of this article

While interesting, I'm not sure that this section belongs in the article.[4] Pairadox 18:57, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is back in there for the moment. I renamed the section to make it a little more obvious how self-referential it is. ITWeb chose to use the phrase " Wikipedia censorship", but that does not really give us permission to deceive ourselves, the censorship, or vandalism or whatever it was was in this article only.--76.221.186.215 23:11, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am removing it as a self-ref. Here is the text and refs:

ITWeb reported that a government official repeatedly vandalized this article. The person responsible for the vandalism has reportedly been suspended,^[1] but their identity has not been disclosed. The incident has been criticized by the Freedom of Expression Institute and the Democratic Alliance, a South African political party, commented that they are closely watching the situation.^[2]

^ S African official vandalises Wikipedia AIDS content August 24, 2007
^ Govt attempts Wikipedia censorship 23 August 2007

anything on the demographics of hiv virus? what % of whites have aids? what % of blacks? it would be interesting if someone include this in the article —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.76.84.223 (talk) 21:09, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ok, i found some information and included it in the article. i'm not good at english, so feel free to rewrite, if needed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.76.84.223 (talk) 21:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some Data in Mbeki Article May Enhance This Article

Hi, some of the data in the Thabo Mbeki article may be of use to this one. I myself in a few days may move applicable material here, if no one beats me to it. Gallador (talk) 04:32, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Added Material From Previous Thabo Mbeki Page

Hi, I've just quickly added here some of the material from the previous Mbeki page (as of now second last version). I'm a bit too busy this instant to check its precise integration into this article. However, now that it's here, I'll try to look that over and make any changes relatively soon. Apologies for any inconvenience. I just figured it was better to get it here and internal editing, if required, could then take place. Gallador (talk) 14:51, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

South African usage of the term PLWHA

Here is one example of how PLWHA is used in South Africa for people who are HIV negative. The front page of the National Association of People Living with HIV and AIDS states that the organisation is intended for "people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS", therefore not only HIV+ people. -- leuce (talk) 20:53, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What is HIV/AIDS?

Is it really necessary to say what HIV and AIDS is in the opening paragraph of this article? Surely the reader will know what HIV and AIDS is, and if he doesn't, he'll click the links taking him to the articles of HIV and AIDS. I suggest we remove the line HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is the retrovirus that causes AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). or similar from the opening paragraph. -- leuce (talk) 19:47, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are still a few people who deny that HIV is the cause of AIDS, and this has led to hundreds of thousands of excess deaths in your country, according to several reliable estimates. Why would it be unreasonable to state this verifiable information in an encyclopaedia? Keepcalmandcarryon (talk) 22:12, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I never said that it is unreasonable to state the information, only that as you drill down into a topic, certain facts become just accepted without having to restate it. For example, the opening paragraph doesn't mention that South Africa is a country (it is assumed the user knows this). But I don't feel very strongly about this. -- leuce (talk) 10:17, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How accessible is antiretroviral therapy in South Africa really?

I see the line Although progress has been made in South Africa - a country that has the resources to provide antiretroviral therapy for all of those with advanced disease[citation needed] - the majority of patients who require antiretroviral therapy in South Africa are still not receiving it. in the opening paragraph.

This is a controversial topic in South Africa and the sad fact is it can't be proven or disproven. I'm sure there will be ample sources for both opinions. The AIDS situation in South Africa is not pure and simple, and what may be regarded as relevant influences by one group may be rejected as irrelevant by another.

I suggest that this line be removed from the opening paragraph and that it gets its own section in which the various sides of the story are told. -- leuce (talk) 19:59, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Leuce, Wikipedia concerns itself with reliably sourced information, not with facts, and not with proving or disproving. It's certainly reasonable to ask for reliable sources for a statement. As for deleting statements or asking for their deletion based upon your opinions, it may appear to some that you're conducting original research. Keepcalmandcarryon (talk) 22:15, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So do I understand your comment correctly, that you agree that the item should be expanded with references for the various viewpoints? Do you agree that it should not be in the opening paragraph? By the way, I'm not asking for deletion based on my opinion, but based on general consensus, which is what I'm trying to attain here by using the Talk page. -- leuce (talk) 10:12, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unnecessarily duplicated statistics

Shocking statistics help drive the point home that the situation in South Africa is dire, but I think one should stike a balance somewhere. I also think that statistics that say more or less the same thing, should not be duplicated simply because they're from difference sources or related to a slightly different time period. For this reason I believe that this line:

The South African National HIV Survey estimated that 10.8% of all South Africans over 2 years old were living with HIV in 2005. There is an average of almost 1,000 deaths of AIDS a day in South Africa.^[1] The ASSA2003 model estimates that 345,640 South Africans died of AIDS in 2006.

...is superfluous. Most of the information in it has already been mentioned earlier in the paragraph.

What do we need here? Number of people in South Africa with AIDS, number of people in South Africa (to provide perspective), ranking of South Africa in terms of the world (also for perspective), and that's it. Why go on and on and on with interesting statistics and more novel ways of saying the same thing? Perhaps one other statistic that's worth mentioning in the opening paragraph is the number of people who died from AIDS, and also what percentage this is of the total death figure. So I suggest that the above line be replaced with:

In 2006, almost 350 000 people died from HIV/AIDS in South Africa, which accounts for nearly half of all deaths. Among the economically active population, it is estimated that over 70% of all deaths in 2006 were HIV/AIDS related.^[1]

There. Much more shocking than the "10.8%" factoid, and IMO more revealing too. -- leuce (talk) 10:50, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see the need for any changes, so you don't yet have consensus, which, by the way, is not a simple vote, but is rather guided by Wikipedia guidelines. You previously tried on this page to cast doubt on reliably-sourced SA AIDS statistics by adding your own speculative and synthetic original research that the WHO/UN statistics could include HIV-negative people who simply have family members, etc., who have HIV...that is, that they're greatly overstated...so I have little reason to assume good faith about your motivations for other changes. As such, let's keep things the way they are unless and until new reliable sources suggest changes. Keepcalmandcarryon (talk) 18:50, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The CIA has now updated its sources and the data contained therein is exactly the same as the data from the UNAIDS document. I've also noticed that the UNAIDS document contains a lot more statistics which may be useful for showing how South Africa compares to the rest of the world. For this reason, I think the paragraph in the introduction that is quoted from the UNAIDS file be moved to its own section, and expanded with more data from the report, and contrasted with information from the world. This idea of mine is independent of the suggestion I made three months ago, above -- leuce (talk) 22:18, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is strange. A previous edit attributed the CIA Factbook for the claim that 20% of South Africans are infected, but the UNAIDS report claims just under 12%. The factbook does state 5.7 million infected, just as in the report, but I'm still scratching my head over how that was turned into 20%. Otto (talk) 20:54, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ ^a ^b HIV and AIDS statistics for South Africa

Deleted item about aids orphans foraging for wood

The item I deleted read as follows: "A recent study found that South African families who had lost members to AIDS were more likely to need to forage for firewood for fuel, and wild herbs and insects for food.[12]" This is a misinterpretation of the relevant article. The article is no longer on the web but you can find it in the Wayback Machine here: http://web.archive.org/web/20070707014309/http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070702/full/070702-10.html

The wording in the article is: "Ecologist Wayne Twine of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and his colleagues went looking for data to back up what many people were seeing in rural Africa — that families impoverished by death and disease would switch from electricity to cheaper wood fuel, and forage for herbs, insects and the like to supplement their food. ... Twine surveyed several hundred families in the rural northeast of South Africa, where about one in four people are HIV positive. The team compared intact families to those who had lost an adult, and those that had suffered a death specifically due to AIDS. ... There was a strong correlation between adult mortality and the use of wood as an energy source. Bereaved families were also more likely to collect and eat edible herbs or insects. "Locusts are now our beef," one family-member told the team."

So, the survey showed that death of a family member is likely to cause people to forage for wood. According to the articlee, this behaviour is not attributatable to AIDS deaths specifically but to any death in the family. -- leuce (talk) 16:08, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wanted: better race-based HIV statistics

The only current race-based statistic in the article is this item: "According to the study of The South African Department of Health, 13.3% of 9,950 Africans that were included in the poll had HIV. Out of 1,173 whites, 0.6% had HIV." This is a poor statistic for the following reasons:

The source says specifically that whites were uncooperative.
These figures represent people who were tested by the survey personnel, and did not include people who admitted their own status voluntarily.
Only 45% of study participants agreed to take the test.
No figures are given about how many white and how many blacks agree or refused to agree to take the test.
These figures do not show how many participants had HIV, but how many of those who agreed to undergo an additional test had tested positive.

I'm not sure if race-based statistics are necessary per se, but if so, this particular study is not the ideal candidate for it. -- leuce (talk) 16:57, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I too am bothered by the bald absence of race based HIV information. It's the most obvious question to ask: who has the disease? How do we attack the problem if we are forbidden to know who has it? Is there a fear that if it turns out to be a 99 percent black problem, as the stats above suggest, the rest of the world will stop caring? I don't think that would be true. Profhum (talk) 04:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There seem to be a lot of stats around. I've added one additional. --NJR_ZA (talk) 06:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The role of the TAC

I think that although the TAC has their own page, it may be good to have a subsection somewhere in this article about the activities of the TAC. On that note I think it must be guarded against to focus too much on the TAC's response to AIDS denialism, for the TAC has done much, much more for AIDS victims in South Africa than just combat denialism. Your thoughts? -- leuce (talk) 12:31, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Possible subsection about ASSA?

It would seem that many doom-and-gloom web sites prefer to quote from the ASSA2003 model's statistics. It may be interesting to have a small subsection devoted to ASSA (or ASSA2003) and its role in calculating AIDS statistics in South Africa. The new ASSA web site is here: http://www.actuarialsociety.org.za/Resource-Centre/Aids-Model-269.aspx Alternatively there could be a section on what the main sources of statistics are for AIDS related stuff in South Africa. -- leuce (talk) 12:40, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"The date in the Model name refers to the most recent antenatal and mortality data used in the calibration of the model." http://www.actuarialsociety.org.za/Portals/1/Documents/49555a07-85d2-48d8-afc1-ec23881733ed.doc (ASSA2003 User Guide). -- leuce (talk) 12:49, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The ASSA site can also help with the demographics section. Here is the page with the models and user guides themselves: http://www.actuarialsociety.org.za/Models-274.aspx -- leuce (talk) 12:53, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Economic impact

I think there is enough material on the web for a separate article about the economic impact of HIV/AIDS on South Africa. Just visit this page: http://www.transnationale.org/countries/zafs.php and Google for relevant keywords along with the names of each of these large companies. -- leuce (talk) 21:27, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The role of the media in South Africa's epidemic

The section "The role of the media in South Africa's epidemic" is mostly original research. Many of the cited references do not actually say what the section says but are provided as proof of what the section says (e.g. the Zapiro cartoon is an example of how the minister was ridiculed but the cartoon itself does not actually say "cartoonists ridiculed the minister"). Some of the references are simply opinion pieces that were published in newspapers, but newspapers typically publish a variety of opinions on their opinion pages that do not necessarily reflect the publication's editorial policy. Oh, and the fact that the media reported on an Aids congress that happened to be humiliating does not mean that the media participated in the act of humiliating. I suggest that that section be harvested for useful references to be used elsewhere, and scrapped, or rewritten with references that actually say what the media's role really was. -- leuce (talk) 20:12, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with your portrayal of that section with reference to the sources. The Zapiro cartoon clearly ridicules the Minister of Health (Manto), and the linked page, which is a reliable source on the topic (Zapiro's own site, apparently) explains this in some detail. The references at the beginning of the paragraph do appear to support the media's role (whether we agree or not, the question is whether it is verifiable), and the cited news sources are just given as examples of that (i.e. the fact that there were other views portrayed would not negate them as examples). I did not create or edit this section, nor am I an expert on the press, but I don't see the problem you describe - maybe this is my misunderstanding. -- Scray (talk) 22:25, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

HIV/AIDS in South African townships

As part of an intensive course study this semester, I would like to create a new Wikipedia article entitled "HIV/AIDS in South African townships" that describes HIV/AIDS prevalence statistics in townships, traditional beliefs about the disease, the effects of HIV/AIDS on men, women, and children, HIV/AIDS education in townships, prevention and treatment, and government and NGO attempts to address the epidemic. Wikipedia currently has thorough articles addressing HIV/AIDS in South Africa (this article) and township conditions. However, Wikipedia does not demonstrate a link between HIV/AIDS and poverty or describe the long-term effects of apartheid on health disparities in South Africa. Although direct racial segregation and discrimination are no longer legal in South Africa, the aftermath of apartheid has left non-white South Africans in an extremely disadvantaged position. HIV/AIDS is prevalent in the entire country of South Africa, but it is concentrated in townships due to poverty and a lack of HIV/AIDS education and awareness programs. I want to create a new article about HIV/AIDS in South African townships to inform readers about the plight of apartheid victims, eighteen years after the legal disintegration of apartheid, in accessing health care and attaining HIV/AIDS education. I would ultimately like to create a subtopic about townships in this article that links to "HIV/AIDS in South African townships."

I welcome your comments and suggestions! Thanks!

Jak8 (talk) 22:25, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Zuma and Aids

I think we should add details on Jacob Zuma and his new AIDS policy. --108.66.1.150 (talk) 07:57, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

advocacy/POV transferred to talk

deleted here at 20 December 2012‎, 23:45:

Nonetheless, quality media coverage of the HIV epidemic remains an essential component to increasing the public’s awareness of the issue, and forms an integral part of any behaviour change drive. It is therefore necessary that media practitioners are well informed of the technicalities, science and ethics of covering HIV, that they have a good network of medical professionals and people living with HIV whom they can access, and that they are committed to ensuring that HIV remains on the public agenda. It is also important that organisations, such as the HIV/AIDS and the Media project,^[1] provide a platform for journalists and non-journalists alike to remain informed about the HIV epidemic in these ways.

I concur with the position expressed above, yet it's advocacy and as such not WP:NPOV. I ask the author to amend this to ensure encyclopaedic value. --tickle me 23:48, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ The HIV/AIDS and the Media project,

What's the racial split in AIDS/HIV infection rates?

Does anyone know? 24.91.50.90 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:03, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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We deliberately spread AIDS in South Africa says Apartheid-era intelligence officer

Headline of NewAfrican March 2019 No°592[5]

HIV and AIDs

How to write an HIV and AIDS poems in English 105.232.255.75 (talk) 12:34, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Intention to Update information on HIV including data, and other advancements

I intend to add more current information to the article so that it is a more accurate source of information on the current, and recent state of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. I think that the current article sets itself up for editing that mainly follows the structure of it currently, and adding the current relevant data. Stud3nt1947 (talk) 00:23, 15 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment

This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Rice University supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2011 Q3 term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from {{WAP assignment}} by PrimeBOT (talk) on 16:04, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[1] S African official vandalises Wikipedia AIDS content August 24, 2007

[2] Govt attempts Wikipedia censorship 23 August 2007

[AVE2006-3] HIV and AIDS statistics for South Africa

[4] The HIV/AIDS and the Media project,

[1]

[2]

[1]

[1]