Society threatened by alarming HIV rate

AIDS is threatening some 600,000 individuals in Rwanda, excluding children under 12 and new-born babies, according to an International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) report. More than 11 percent of the adult population is infected with HIV nationwide, “a dramatic increase compared to less than two percent in 1986”, it said. Recent reports from Rwanda’s ministry of health indicated that a third of people between the ages of 25 and 44 tested for the HIV virus in Kigali were seropositive, prompting Red Cross workers to stop collecting blood in the capital. The rural infection rate for people between 20 and 44 has also increased ten-fold over a decade, rising from 1.3 percent in 1986 to 10.8 percent in 1997.

The ministry of health reports that while the number of AIDS orphans is nearing 100,000, the workforce is being seriously debilitated. Against the backdrop of endemic poverty and post-genocide trauma, “an epidemic could hasten the disintegration of Rwandan social fabric”, the Federation report warned.