Earlier this month the United Nations released its Human Development Report 2004 which notes that the AIDS crisis has caused declines in life expectancy compared to 25 years ago.
In Rwanda, for example, the life expectancy in 1970-1975 was 44.6 years. In 2000-2005, however, it had declined to 39.3 years.
The African states of Tanzania, Cote d’Ivoire, Zambia, Malawi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Congo, Swaziland, Botswana, and Namibia all saw declines in life expectancy.
In the case of Zambia, whose life expectancy rate is now estimated to be only 32.4 years, life expectancy today is lower than it was in 1960. Not surprisingly, 16.5 percent of the adult population of Zambia is believed to be HIV positive.
Source:
Big fall in African life expectancy. The BBC, July 15, 2004.
UN Human Development Report 2004. United Nations, 2004.
The AIDS Causes Life Expectancy Crash in Some Africa Countries by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.