Increasing mortality and AIDS rates, falling fertility rates
http://www.sdearthtimes.com/et0599/et0599s7.html
extract:
"The HIV epidemic
"Of these three threats, the HIV virus is the first to spiral out of control in developing countries," said Brown. "The HIV epidemic should be seen for what it is: an international emergency of epic proportions, one that could claim more lives in the early part of the next century than World War II did in this century." In sub-Saharan Africa, HIV infection rates are soaring, already infecting one fifth to one fourth of the adult population in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Swaziland.
Barring a medical miracle, many African countries will lose one fifth or more of their adult population to AIDS within the next decade. To find a precedent for such a potentially devastating loss of life from an infectious disease, we have to go back to the decimation of New World Indian communities by the introduction of smallpox in the sixteenth century or to the Bubonic plague that claimed roughly a third of Europe's population during the fourteenth century.
Ominously, the virus has also established a foothold in the Indian subcontinent. With 4 million of its adults now HIV positive, India is home to more infected individuals than any other nation. And with the infection rate among India's adults at roughly 1 percent a critical threshold for potentially rapid spread the HIV epidemic threatens to engulf the country if the government does not move quickly to check it.
Using life expectancy, the sentinel indicator of development, we can see that the HIV virus is reversing the gains of the last several decades. For example, in Botswana, life expectancy has fallen from 62 years in 1990 to 44 years in 1998. In Zimbabwe, it has fallen from 61 years in 1993 to 49 years in 2000 and could drop to 40 years in 2010. For infants born with the virus, life expectancy is less than two years. "
