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Graveyard shortage due to HIV/AIDS

    JOHANNESBURG

    South Africa needs more graveyards to cope with the high number of AIDS-related deaths, cemetery officials have said.

    In Durban, the largest city in the hard hit KwaZulu-Natal province, the city's cemetery department said the amount of land needed each year had doubled in the last decade to more than 12 hectares - a graveyard boom "caused by the scourge of HIV/AIDS in our society."

    "About five years ago we were burying around eight bodies on a Saturday. Now we are burying anything between 45 and 50 ... 80 percent of those 45 people will be young, between 18 and 30," Reuters quoted Thembinkosi Ngcobo, the city's head of cemeteries, as saying.

    Because HIV/AIDS typically takes around 10 years to kill a healthy 25-year-old, research shows that the large upswing in infections from the early 1990s is only now beginning to take its toll.

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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