About this site

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

Basic health indicators

Blacks and coloureds are markedly worse off than whites and Asians with respect to basic health:

South African National Tuberculosis Association estimates of the extent of tuberculosis are that there are over 100 000 new cases of the disease every year or 235 per 100 000 population, ten times more than the incidence in developed countries and 15% above the African average.

Aids is not a notifiable disease in South Africa and many varied estimates of the extent of full-blown Aids and HIV infection have been published. According to the National Manpower Commission, the disease is most prevalent in the most economically and reproductively active group of 20-39 years old, approximately 400 000 people are already infected and 400 new infections are occurring every day. If no antidote has been found by 2000, South Africa is expected to have between 3.7-million and 4.3-million HIV carriers and a total of between 600 000 and 1.1-million people are expected to have died from Aids.

(Source: National Manpower Commission Annual report 1992.)

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. Return to theThis resource is hosted by the site.