= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
pragmatist comments on Politics Discussion Thread February 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (146)
Yeah, South Africa was led by an HIV denialist for a decade. Despite Jacob Zuma's many other flaws, he has been a huge improvement in this regard . He massively expanded the distribution of ARVs, and the country's life expectancy is now back up to 60.
That's a very strange article it quotes 54 for the life expectancy in 2009 and 60 for the life expectancy in 2012?
Google Public Data has a life expectancy of 52 for 2011 while has one of 52 for 2010 and 53 for 2011.
The number in the article comes from a rapid mortality surveillance system created by the South African Medical Research Council to monitor trends in mortality without a substantial time lag. You can see their report here. I don't know enough to comment on the reliabiity of the number.
Anyway, my point is that mortality rates in South Africa are improving rapidly with increased availability of antiretrovirals. That trend is corroborated by other sources (see page 6 of this Stats SA report, for instance).