sahr2001 - Health Systems Trust

17 • Health and Related Indicators
5. Note: Number of cases: 58 081.
Ref: Stats Notes Jan 2001
6. Note: Number of cases: 151 239. The TBSYS national reporting rate for 2000 was 82.7% (ranging from 40.2% in KZN to 98.8% in WC, not given for MP and NW).
Ref: DOH TB
7. Note: Number of cases: 40 734.
Ref: Stats Notes Jan 2001
8. Ref: DOH TB
9. Note: Personal communication DoH. Data from the annual antenatal surveys.
Ref: DOH Notification
HIV/AIDS
The major starting point for all work in this field is the data collected in the
national anonymous survey of HIV prevalence among women attending public
antenatal clinics, performed annually by the Department of Health. This
survey involves data collection at sentinel sites, selected on the basis of
systematic random sampling with weighting by the probability proportional
to size (PPS) technique. The following comments from the South African
Health Review 2000 (Chapter 15) remain pertinent:
◆ ‘HIV infection levels in the general community in South Africa are
thought to be lower than in the public sector antenatal clinic attendee
population. Children and the elderly, who are at substantially lower
risk of HIV, are not captured by antenatal surveys. Even among adults
in sexually active age groups, the antenatal survey prevalence figures
do not reflect the lower overall risk of men, people who are less sexually
active, and communities using the private sector. On the other hand,
recent studies indicate that fertility among HIV positive women is
substantially lower than among uninfected women, and this suggests
that antenatal data may in fact underestimate HIV prevalence in women
of reproductive age in many communities.’
◆ ‘While these data give some sense of the different risk profiles in the
population, additional surveys serve to remind us that the majority of
the population is at risk of HIV infection and that certain sectors of
the population are at much higher risk of infection than the general
population. Provincial estimates from these data mask large differences
between regions and HIV impacts on specific communities within any
region may differ markedly.’
This section has therefore included a variety of projections from mathematical
simulation models, which are calibrated to antenatal data. These include
estimates of HIV prevalence in the total population, of the number of persons
with symptomatic AIDS, as well as of the number of AIDS orphans. That
these projections vary should not be surprising. This does not however detract
from their general usefulness as planning tools.
Despite the scale and importance of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, there are still
relatively few data available at a provincial or national level, or by population
group.
303