Developmental gains reduced by HIV/AIDS

The South African Department of Social Development has announced that the HIV/AIDS pandemic holds "serious social development implications" for the country. Dr. Connie Kganakga, the department's chief director of HIV/AIDS, admitted at the 2nd South African AIDS Conference in Durban that "the developmental gains [of] this country have been taken back ... because of the impact of the pandemic". She said the department was facing tremendous challenges in the fight against the disease due to a severe lack of human resources, and public social services as well as nongovernmental and community-based organisations were deficient in staff and capacity. Kganakga noted that one of the department's major challenges was to establish a database of orphans and vulnerable children -the number of orphans in South Africa has reached the one million mark.