Johannesburg - The number of South Africans living with HIV-AIDS has risen 12 per cent to 4.7 million, or one in nine of the population, the government said yesterday.
A previous government antenatal survey estimated that one in 10 South Africans, or 4.2 million people, were infected with the disease in 1999. South African HIV rates are much higher than those in the West, where 0.6 per cent of adults in the US and 0.1 per cent in Germany live with HIV-AIDS.