PRETORIA, South Africa, Feb. 18 -- South Africa on Friday reported a 57 percent jump in deaths between 1997 and 2002, providing a startling -- if indirect -- picture of the rocketing toll of the country's AIDS epidemic.
Releasing figures from a widely awaited national mortality study, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) said reported deaths had leapt to 499,268 in 2002 from 318,287 in 1997.
Among those older than 15, deaths increased by 62 percent.
The report showed deaths increasing most rapidly for women and people ages 20 to 49 -- the groups considered most susceptible to the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS and that affects an estimated one in nine of the country's 43 million people.
The study "provides indirect evidence that the HIV epidemic in South Africa is raising the mortality levels of prime aged adults," the head of Stats SA, Pali Lehohla, said in a statement.
The study appeared likely to spark new debate over the extent of the AIDS crisis in South Africa, where President Thabo Mbeki's government is often accused by critics of underplaying and underestimating the crisis.
"Death from AIDS of working age adults is a real and immediate crisis," the opposition Democratic Alliance said in a statement Friday responding to the new numbers.
The Stats SA study was based on 3 million official death certificates recorded over a five-year period. It said that on average, 1,368 South Africans died every day in 2002, compared with 872 deaths a day in 1997.
"It is in the 30-to-34 age group that we are seeing a very, very high percentage of deaths being registered," said Liz Gavin, the agency's director of population statistics.
Officials said exact causes of death remained hard to ascertain because in many cases, common AIDS-related diseases such as tuberculosis, influenza or pneumonia were officially recorded as responsible.
Those three diseases are killing many more South Africans than before as the AIDS virus spreads through the population.
Pneumonia was listed as responsible for 51,000 deaths in 2001, compared with 22,000 in 1997, while the toll from influenza and pneumonia jumped to 31,000 from 12,000 in the same period.
HIV, the subject of intense social stigma in South Africa, where publicly funded AIDS drug treatment became available only last year, was directly blamed for 9,000 deaths in 2001, compared to 6,000 four years earlier.
South Africa last year launched a public anti-retroviral drug program, but implementation remains slow, with tens of thousands of prospective patients still lacking access to the lifesaving medication.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, speaking on Friday before the Stats SA figures were released, said the government was doing its best despite confusion about the extent of the disease and numbers of people to be treated.
"Give me a country that has precise figures. Everybody is working on projections, and we were working on projections, too," she told reporters in Cape Town.
