-Caveat Lector- The citizen 9 sep 1999 Cremation is traditional taboo No space in Zim to bury Aids victims HARARE - Cemeteries in Zimbabwe are becoming short of space to cope with an Aids pandemic, now killing at lease 1 200 people a week amid chronic poverty and economic misery. Zimbabwe's basic death rate in 1998 was over three times higher than it would have been without Aids. A quarter of the adult population has Aids or the virus, according to the United Nations. The death rate is expected to increase four fold by the year 2010, according to the Harare-based non-governmental organisation, Southern Africa Aids Information Dissemination Services (Safaids). Zimbabwe was last year ranked the worst affected country in the world, with the Unaids agency estimating that 1.5 million people, or some 25 percent of adults were infected with the Human Immuno Deficiency Virus (HIV), the precursor to Aids. Current infection rates range from 4.2 percent in a rural antenatal clinic to 34 percent in the oldest high density suburb of the capital Mbare. However, surveillance data compiled in July under a UN-funded project on gender and Aids in Zimbabwe, showed that HIV percentage rates among antenatal women varied from seven percent to 50.8 percent. Last month, the country launched voluntary Aids testing and counselling centres with much pomp and publicity. The shortage of burial ground has led to a public campaign to promote cremation, which is a taboo in traditional cultures beliefs, to save space as Aids claims hundreds of lives daily. Life expectancy, which peaked at 61 in 1990, has fallen to 49. According to Safaids, without Aids life expectancy in Zimbabwe would now be around 69.5 years, but it has been reduced by 31 years. With more a quarter of the 5.5 million adult Zimbabweans HIV-infected, hundreds of thousands of children are pushed to the brink of orphanhood. While in 1996, there were an estimated 2.1 orphans per commercial farm in Zimbabwe, these figures have climbed to around 10, according to the Unaids. The government estimates that there will be over 900 000 children under 15 without parents by the year 2000. The onslaught of Aids has dented economic growth in the form of increased medical costs, reduced household and national incomes due to illnesses and death of workers. Nigeria heading "for Aids disaster" LAGOS - Nigeria Africa's most populous country, is sleepwalking to an Aids disaster, with little or no government action to tackle what many still see as a "white man's disease", experts say. "It is a disaster. There is next to no government action and no one sees quite how serious this is," one health worker who asked not to be named told AFP. "The situation is really very bleak." On official figures, an estimated six million people in Nigeria, five percent of the 108-120 million population, have the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV) that causes Aids. But Aids workers think the real figure is double that - a new survey is due out soon - and project that within a generation, the figure could reach 30 to 35 percent or tens of millions of people. "The world is holding its breath in horror and anticipation of the disaster that will befall us if we do not take effective steps to stop the spread of Aids in our country," former Health Minister Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti told a gathering in Lagos earlier this year. "It might even be too late to aver the impending disaster. Maybe we can only ameliorate it," he said. Under the military governments that ruled Nigeria from 1983 to May this year, a National Aids and STD (sexually transmitted disease) Control Programme was set up but the programme is poorly funded, officials admit. Aids deaths are often hushed up. In one small rural clinic alone in north-eastern Benue State, 282 people died last year of Aids but usually Aids deaths are not recorded as such for fear of the stigma. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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