Just cap it

AT LAST some good news out of South Africa, home to 0.7% of the world’s population, but 17% of all HIV/AIDS sufferers. Although the number of South Africans living with the disease continues to rise, and now totals nearly 6m (out of a population of 50m), the tally of new cases each year has tumbled by half since 1999—thanks largely to a dramatic increase in the use of condoms, according to new research. link

But, according to a study published in the British Royal Society’s Interface journal last month, this seems to be changing. National surveys show the proportion of young South African men aged 16-24 who reported using a condom at their last sexual encounter leaping from 20% in 1999 to 75% in 2009. This, more than an equally dramatic rise in anti-retroviral treatment, is the “most significant factor” in the fall of new infections, say the British and South African authors of the study.

the economist 10.03.12