South Sudan in HIV/AIDS epidemic – UNDP says

By Amil Khan

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Southern Sudan is in the midst of an
HIV/AIDS epidemic and most of its people are without clean
water, sanitation or education services, a United Nations body
said in a report released on Sunday.

The report published by the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) said health and education in north Sudan
improved slightly in the past 15 years but the situation in the
south deteriorated while the two regions were at war.

The statistics in the report are among the first to be
published on poverty, health and education in the south of
Sudan, where former rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation
Movement (SPLM) fought the north in a 21-year-long civil war.

“The HIV/AIDS epidemic in south Sudan is believed to have
moved in the generalized phase … where infection has gone
beyond high-risk groups into the general population,” the UNDP
said in the report.

The report charts the progress of the areas controlled by
the northern government and the SPLM from 1990 in meeting a set
of globally agreed aims known as the Millennium Development
Goals.

About 90 percent of people in the south live on less than
$1 a day. Some 75 percent of children have no access to
education, the UNDP said, adding the situation worsened during
the war.

Malaria counts for 40 percent of all health facility visits
in the south, where despite vast water resources, 70 percent of
people do not have access to safe water and 85 percent do not
have sanitation facilities, the body added.

A UNDP official told Reuters much of the data had been
collected in difficult circumstances and the organization was
trying to collect more extensive information for another
upcoming report.

The situation in the northern areas of the country was
better but people in rural areas often lived in worse
conditions that those in towns and cities, the UNDP said.

The number of undernourished people in the parts of the
country led by the northern government fell to 26 percent from
31 percent in 1990, the UNDP said in its report.

Primary education had been expanded in many areas in the
north but overall achievement in basic education is still low,
UNDP added.

Malaria was a major problem, but deaths from the disease
were not increasing. Infant mortality rates had fallen
slightly, but government spending on health was very low, at
around $2.5 per capita in 2000, the U.N. body said in the
report.

The UNDP said monitoring of HIV/AIDS in the northern areas
was weak but did not give further details.

A January peace deal officially ended the civil war, which
killed around 2 million people, mainly though disease and
hunger.