Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - December 18, 2005
Andrew Donaldson, London

According to a damning new report by Unicef, the United Nation's childrens' organisation, life expectancy in South Africa in 1970 was 53 years. After reaching a high of 62 in 1990, it dropped dramatically to 47 in 2004.

Life expectancy is defined as the number of years newborn children would live if subject to the mortality risks prevailing at the time of their birth.

Similarly, the crude death rate - that is, the annual number of deaths per 1000 people - has risen from 14 in 1970 to 18 in 2004. In 1990, South Africa's crude death rate was just eight.

These and other statistics in Unicef's report, Excluded and Invisible: The State of the World's Children 2006, illustrate the tragic impact of the Aids pandemic on the country.

The report is a sweeping assessment of the world's most vulnerable children, whose rights to a safe and healthy childhood are exceptionally difficult to protect.

It says that, at the end of 2003, there were an estimated 5.3 million South Africans living with HIV/Aids - including 189000 babies - and that 1.1 million children, 17 years and younger, were orphaned by Aids.

These figures were based on an antenatal survey carried out by the Department of Health in October 2002. The HIV incidence rate reported is 2% of the total population, 6% of births, and 3.8% for infection acquired via breast-feeding.

Unicef predicted that, by 2010, between 9% and 12% of all South African children will be orphaned as a result of Aids and other causes.

The infant mortality rate, estimated at 54 per 1000 live births, compared with 45 in 1990, is higher where maternal literacy and other socioeconomic conditions are poor. South Africa's aggregate under-five mortality rate is 67 per 1000 live births, compared with 60 in 1990. The rate for Africans, 63, is four times higher than that among whites, 15.

But South Africa fares well when compared with its neighbouring countries.

The under-five mortality rates for Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe are 116, 152, 63 and 129, respectively.

South Africa's gross national income per capita is given as $3630, a 2004 figure, but 11% of the population existed on less than a dollar a day during the period 1993 to 2003. Zimbabwe's corresponding figures were $480 and 56%.

Overall, the outlook for children in the southern and eastern African region is bleak.

Life expectancy at birth is given as 46, while the figure for the rest of the world is 67.

The GNI per capita is $836, while the rest of the world's is $6298. Some 38% of the population in southern and eastern Africa exists on less than a dollar a day, while the figure for the rest of the world is 21%.

When it comes to HIV/Aids, the contrasts between the region and the rest of the world are startling. The prevalence rate for the age group 15 to 49 is given as 10.2%. The rest of the world's rate is 1.1%.

The report estimated that, at the end of 2003, there were 1.2 million eastern and southern African children, 17 and younger, living with HIV. The figure for the rest of the world was 2.1 million.

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