Aids in the Namibian Society - Objective and short description of the project

Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region of the world that has developed a generalized, self-sustaining, heterosexually transmitted AIDS epidemic. According to UNAIDS estimates, some 83 per cent of all AIDS deaths have occurred in Africa although the continent accounts for only a tenth of the world’s population. The HIV epidemic began later in Southern Africa than in Eastern Africa but has spread extremely rapidly. Thus, regrettably, the development in this region during the 1990s that has most significance for health and mortality is not the establishment of democratic government in Namibia and then South Africa but the rapid spread of HIV. Southern Africa now contains most of the countries hardest hit by AIDS.

Documentation of the process of demographic transition in sub-Saharan Africa is partial in its coverage, of limited historical depth, and lacking in temporal detail. Little is known about the extent of fertility increase and mortality decline during the colonial period, about patterns of adult mortality in Africa at the outbreak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, or about the impact of this epidemic on fertility and mortality.

This project in Ovamboland is based on the capture and processing of mortality and fertility data that already exist and are known to be of high reliability. Thus, it represents an unusually cost-effective way of studying the demographic impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in a population for which mortality data exist already for the period up to 1990 and which is known to have experienced an extremely rapid rise in HIV infection (and therefore mortality) during the 1990s. It is also possible to analyse interactions between fertility and mortality and to compare the mortality data for Ovamboland with the mortality of other Southern African populations. In addition, little information exists about cultural factors connected to AIDS epidemic in Namibia and how campaigning for the prevention of the spreading of HIV/AIDS has been carried out in Namibia.

The main aims of the project are:

• to measure the rise in mortality resulting from the AIDS epidemic in Ovamboland by comparing data for the 1990s with those for 1965-1989;
• to compare the pattern of mortality change in Ovamboland with that revealed by the other recent mortality data that exist for Southern Africa;
• to measure the changes in fertility figures associated with the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Namibia;
• based on these results, to develop appropriate mortality and projection models for contemporary Africa;
• to analyse cultural behaviour and the spread of AIDS in Ovamboland;
• to analyse the role of the media in reporting of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and in campaigning for the prevention of the spread of HIV.

NOTE: This research project is finished. See the homepage of the current research project of the research group: Coping with the HIV pandemic in African Communities: The case of North-Central Namibia