Panafrican News Agency - February 17, 1999
Addressing a transport industry meeting on the issue, the minister admitted that South Africa was nowhere near the point where it is able to control the spread of the disease.
He said a number of initiatives are underway to try and address the problem. These included a study of the spread of HIV/AIDS along transport routes in Africa.
Anthony Pramualratan, director of the Thailand Business Coalition on AIDS, said long distance truck drivers frequently resorted to alcohol and casual sex. He said Thailand had tried to address the problem by boosting the image of transport workers and their contribution to the economy in an effort to promote co-operation between them and the government.
He said drivers are encouraged to travel with their partners and children when possible.
Projections indicate that within three years almost a quarter of a million South Africans will die of AIDS each year, and that this figure will have risen to more than a million by 2008.
Average life expectancy is expected to fall from 60 years to around 40 years between 1998 and 2008.
The joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS said that towards the end of 1998, 50 percent of all the new infections in southern Africa that year had occurred in South Africa, which was catching up with equally hit neighbours -Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.
In these countries, one in five adults is said to be living with HIV, the virus that eventually leads to AIDS.
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