HIV/AIDS, the silent war in Africa

Africa Can... - End Poverty

Under-5 mortality is often used—perhaps implicitly—as a measure of "population health".  But what is happening to adult mortality in Africa? 


In a recent working paperi , we combine data from 84 Demographic and Health Surveys from 46 countries, and calculate mortality based on the sibling mortality reports collected from female respondents aged 15-49. The working paper is available here and the database we used for the analysis can be found here.


We find that adult mortality is quite different from child mortality (under-5 mortality)1.   This is perhaps obvious to most readers, but is clearly illustrated in figure 1. While in general both under-5 and adult mortality decline with per-capita income, and over time, the latter effect is much smaller for adult mortality, which has barely shifted in countries outside Africa between 1975-79 and 2000-04.


But in sub-Saharan Africa, contrary to under-5 mortality everywhere and to adult mortality outside of Africa, adult mortality increased between 1975-79 and 2000-04 and the relationship between adult mortality and income became positive in Africa as indicated by the upward sloping line in 2000-04.


This diverging and dramatic trend for sub-Saharan Africa is mainly driven by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. 

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