BANGKOK, July 14 (AFP) - AIDS has slashed the life expectancy in some African countries to just 33 years, the United Nations announced at the International AIDS Conference here Wednesday.
"Thirteen sub-Saharan African countries have suffered dramatic reversals in human development since 1990, a decline largely attributable to the AIDS pandemic," the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said in a press release.
"In seven of these countries, the rising prevalence of HIV/AIDS has driven life expectancy down below 40 years."
Worst-hit of all is Zambia, where 16.5 percent of the adult population has the AIDS virus.
A child born there in 1990 could expect to live 47.4 years, according to a report that the UNDP is to publish on Thursday.
Twelve years later, a child born in Zambia could expect to live just 32.7 years.
Close behind is Zimbabwe, where a quarter of the population has the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
Life expectancy there has plunged from 56.6 years in 1990 to 33.9 years in 2002.
Third in line is Swaziland, with an HIV infection rate among adults of 38.8 percent, where the life expectancy has tumbled from 55.3 years to 35.7 years in a dozen years.
The other countries in the seven named by the UNDP were:
- Central African Republic: HIV prevalence in 2002 of 13.5 percent, a fall in life expectancy from 47.2 to 39.8 years from 1990 to 2002.
- Lesotho: 28.9 percent. Life expectancy fall from 53.6 to 36.3 years.
- Mozambique: 12.2 percent. Life expectancy fall from 43.1 to 38.5 years.
- Malawi: 14.2 percent. Life expectancy fall from 45.7 to 37.8 years.
"In all these countries, AIDS is reversing the hard-won development gains of recent decades," said Elizabeth Lwanga, deputy director of the UNDP's regional bureau for Africa.
"We need an unprecedented and holistic response to this crisis, which is taking a devastating toll on our communities, and on the capacity of our public institutions."
The data is based partly on UNAIDS' update on the global AIDS pandemic, issued on July 6. The term of adult population applies to people aged 15-49.
Africa is home to 25 million of the estimated 38 million people with HIV, and has suffered a correspondingly high number of the 20 million deaths that have occurred since AIDS was identified 23 years ago.
The information released in Bangkok on Wednesday comes from a UNDP report, due to be released in Brussels on Thursday.
The document, called The 2004 Human Development Index, covers 175 countries, plus Hong Kong and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
It focuses on several measurable dimensions of human development, including infant mortality, school enrolment, literacy as well as income, to give a wide appraisal of a country's development.
The five countries with the lowest level of human development in this year's global rankings are Guinea-Bissau, Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Sierra Leone.
UNDP said that there were other factors that hurt African development, most notably war, but AIDS, especially in southern Africa, was now clearly having a devastating effect on some countries' futures.
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