Johannesburg, Oct 20: South Africa, with about 11 percent of its population HIV positive, may finally be winning the battle to bring the killer AIDS disease under control, a study released today indicated.
The research, published in the African Journal of AIDS Research, delivered what it described as a "more positive scenario" for AIDS in South Africa, which is struggling with the highest single HIV/AIDS caseload in the world.

Study authors Thomas Rehle, an independent U.S. researcher, and Olive Shisana of South Africa's Human Sciences Research Council developed a model based on data from HIV-prevalence surveys conducted in South African ante-natal clinics.

They said South Africa's AIDS epidemic likely peaked in 2002 -- when 4.69 million people were living with the disease out of a total population of 45 million -- and would level off as fewer new infections were recorded.

The new epidemiological model is the first to utilize data from South Africa's first national study on HIV prevalence, released late in 2002 by the Human Sciences Research Council and the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

The study projects that the annual number of AIDS related deaths in South Africa will peak in 2008 at 487,320 before declining to about 470,000 in 2010.

The number of new HIV infections in the key 15-49 age group -- a leading indicator of how the epidemic will progress -- has already dropped sharply from 4.2 percent in 1997 to 1.7 percent in 2003, the study said. Bureau Report