Issued by Ministry of Health
7 May 2008
The Ministry of Health notes the reports that the Development Bank of South Africa has retracted its inflated figures on the prevalence of HIV in South Africa and "apologized for any misunderstanding that may have arisen".
While the retraction is accepted, the Ministry regrets the potentially negative effect that the information released by DBSA has had on the credibility of government statistics on HIV and commitment to prevent HIV infections.
The Ministry of Health also calls upon the Democratic Alliance, Sandy Kalyan to retract her statement calling for "interrogation" of the Minister of Health on the matter.
Kalyan championed the DBSA statistics as reliable saying they were "based on information obtained from many grass-roots sources in addition to clinics, local municipalities, development planners, mortuaries and funeral homes."
We call upon the honourable Kalyan to do the right thing and apologize for taking DBSA figures at face value and for throwing unjustified allegations at Health Minister about the reliability of government statistics on HIV prevalence in the country.
The Sunday Independent (May 04) reported on that the DBSA released a report alleging that the prevalence of HIV was at 7,6 million. The figures are far off from the estimates of many other surveys conducted by government and independent research institutions on the prevalence of HIV in South Africa.
The Department of Health uses the Survey of HIV prevalence amongst pregnant women attending antenatal clinics and follow the model suggested by UNAIDS to estimate the level of HIV prevalence in the general population.
The Antenatal Survey Report for 2006 has put HIV prevalence in the general population at 5,4 million. This estimate is supported by the findings of other research institutions such as the Human Science Research Council (HSRC), Actuarial Society of South Africa and Global AIDS report released by UNAIDS during the last World AIDS Day.
Contact Sibani Mngadi @ 0827720161