PRETORIA, Feb 18 (AFP) - South Africa's death rate jumped 57 percent between 1997 and 2003 with HIV/AIDS emerging as one of the main killers in the 15 to 49 age bracket, the official statistics agency said Friday.
Chief statistician Pali Lehohla said that data from about three million death certificates issued between 1997 and 2003 "provide indirect evidence that the HIV epidemic in South Africa is raising the mortality levels of prime aged adults in that associated diseases are on the increase."
"Within the 15 to 49 age group, HIV does in fact emerge as one of the leading natural causes of death," added Liz Gavin, acting deputy director general for population statistics.
The official Statistics SA agency released a new report on the causes of death showing that tuberculosis accounted for the highest number of mortalities although officials admitted that these deaths could be linked to AIDS.
According to the Stats SA study, tuberculosis killed 37,917 people aged between 15 and 49 in 2001 while HIV/AIDS claimed 7,564.
South Africa has the highest HIV/AIDS caseload in the world, with 5.3 million people, or one in five adults, living with HIV and AIDS, according to UN figures.
Stats SA chief Lehohla has criticised international organisations such as the United Nations for inflating AIDS figures, saying that his agency had come up with estimates "approximately 6.5 percent lower than some international agencies as the World Health Organisation and the UN."
The release of the report was repeatedly delayed, fueling speculation that Statistics SA was seeking to conceal the number of of HIV/AIDS deaths.
Gavin denied that Pretoria had turned up the heat on the agency to downplay the HIV/AIDS-related fatalities, saying: "There has certainly been no pressure on us to change any of the results."
The British medical journal The Lancet this month cited estimates from the South African Medical Research Council showing that the number of deaths linked to HIV/AIDS was likely to be thrice as much as the one in the government statistical report.
"Social stigma associated with HIV/AIDS, tacitly perpetuated by the government's reluctance to bring the crisis out in the open and face it head on, prevents many from speaking out about the causes of illness ... and leads doctors to record uncontroversial diagnoses in death certificates," The Lancet's report said.
The South African Medical Research Council said last month that there had been a steep rise in AIDS deaths in South Africa, but a large number still go unreported because they are attributed to AIDS-related conditions, without the disease mentioned as the cause of death.
Some 20 percent of deaths are "empirically" caused by HIV/AIDS, according to the council.
The release of the latest statistics on the causes of death came a week after President Thabo Mbeki declared in his state of the nation address that his government's plan to fight AIDS was "the best in the world."
The South African president last year said some 53,000 people would be receiving free anti-retroviral drugs from 113 state-accredited health centres by March this year.
However, that target has not been met and AIDS activists estimate that only 20,000 people are receiving free ARVs.
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