High AIDS rates among children

More than half of all children admitted to South Africa's second-largest hospital are HIV-positive or have full-blown AIDS, an AIDS researcher has said. Professor Jerry Coovadia, head of the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in the KwaZulu-Natal province, said child patients at King Edward VIII Hospital in Durban had an HIV prevalence rate of between 40 percent and 60 percent. However, the director-general of health for the province, Prof Ronald Green-Thompson, said he did not want to stigmatise King Edward VIII as an AIDS hospital. The local Sunday Times newspaper quoted Green-Thompson as saying: "The epidemic has put pressure on our services because of recurring opportunistic infections." He said a similar grim picture was seen at hospitals throughout the province, where some 60 percent of patients were HIV-positive.