by Nigel Marsh - Hope Communications

BARCELONA, MONDAY - Hot on the heels of two grim recent reports from UNAIDS and UNICEF, the United States Agency for International Development yesterday released its own gloomy analysis of the impact of AIDS on the world's population.

Africa is the continent where this impact will be most immediately and clearly felt, Chief of Health Statistics Karen Stanecki told journalists, as it has had excessively high prevalence for longest. Around 90% of people with AIDS are in the developing world, around 70% in sub-Saharan Africa. Four nations already have more than 30% of their adult population infected.

Life expectancy has plummeted in these countries, despite a decade of gains in other development fields. In Botswana life expectancy has fallen to 39, from 72; in Zimbabwe, where an average person would live to 69 without AIDS, she will now only reach 40. All sub-Saharan African nations are seeing an average reduction in life expectancy at birth of 10 to 20 years, and by 2010 it will be worse. A Botswanan average will be 27 years by then; a Namibian or Zambian 34; a Swazi 33.

"USAID has been putting money into reducing infant and child mortality for years, but our gains have been reversed because of AIDS and the transmission from mother to child," said Stanecki. "30% of all children born to infected mothers will themselves be infected.

"The number of children who die before their first birthday has already been affected. In Zimbabwe it is twice as high as it would be without AIDS. By 2010 more infants will die from AIDS in Botswana, Zimbabwe, South African and Namibia than any other cause."

The same wretched picture presents itself for older children, too. In Zimbabwe in 2010, four out of five deaths of under-fives will be due to AIDS, say USAID.

According to the report, five countries will be in population decline because of AIDS by 2010 - Botswana, Mozambique, Lesotho, Swaziland and South Africa. Zimbabwe and Namibia will have a growth rate close to zero, and falling.

"We are at the beginning of the 21st century, and AIDS is the number one cause of death in Africa, and the number four cause worldwide," said the Agency's Global Health Bureau director Anne Peterson. "We need to realize that we are only just beginning to see the impacts, and then mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, but those impacts are going to be very serious. The staggering trend of decreasing life expectancies due to AIDS only strengthens our resolve to do more."

The USAID report The AIDS Pandemic In The 21st Century is a biannual production from USAID's Census Bureau. An online version is available from the USAID website by clicking on this link: www.usaid.gov