Men outnumber women due to AIDS

South African men now outnumber their female counterparts due to the effects of HIV/AIDS on society, the local Cape Times reported on Wednesday. Alan Whiteside, director of the University of Natal's Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division, said, "This is social engineering like we have never seen before, and it is a critical question no one has addressed." "The natural gender balance was that there were slightly fewer adult men than women. Now there is a ratio of 120 males to 100 females," Whiteside said. He also said there was little evidence that South Africa was dealing with the future impact of HIV/AIDS, and cautioned that if current trends continued, one million people a year would require care by 2007. Whiteside was addressing a recent Medical Research Council (MRC) AIDS forum.