The Impact Of HIV/AIDS on Adult Mortality in South Africa and the Impact of Antiretroviral Therapy on that Impact

Rob Dorrington, University of Cape Town
Debbie Bradshaw, Medical Research Council of South Africa
Ria Laubscher, Medical Research Council of South Africa
David Bourne, Medical Research Council of South Africa

The rapid spread of HIV and its impact on mortality made it necessary to establish a rapid mortality surveillance system, which has been extended to monitor basic details of deaths registered in the 9 provinces of South Africa. The number of deaths on the Population Register continued to increase between 2000 and 2004, where after a slowdown in the growth has been noticed. The increase is particularly marked for young adult ages and differs for men and women. Three distinct profiles were observed when then natural deaths by province were compared. When compared with data from cause-of-death analysis, the same age-specific pattern of deaths was observed, suggesting that there are no substantial biases introduces by this method of rapid surveillance. The comparison with estimates from a model also confirms this pattern but indicates that the slow down in the mortality is more significant that projected by the model.