Rapid AIDS Rate Found in West Africa

Less than five years after the first AIDS cases appeared in the Ivory Coast capital of Abidjan in west Africa, the disease has become the leading cause of death in the city’s men and the second leading cause of death in its women, according to a study by American and west African researchers.

The study, which appears in today’s issue of the journal Science, is the first detailed look at how AIDS has affected death rates among adults in a major African city. It paints a grim picture of the disease’s impact in a region of the continent that most health officials had assumed was less severely affected than central Africa.

“These are very startling data,” said James Chin, chief of surveillance, forecasting and impact assessment at the World Health Organization’s Global AIDS Program. “This is west Africa. We would not have expected, at this point in time, that high a mortality attributed to HIV.”

The study was a collaboration among scientists from the federal Centers for Disease Control and government and academic researchers from the Ivory Coast.