Swaziland: AIDS Creating a Society in Distress

HIV/AIDS is having an unprecedented impact on the small mountainous kingdom of Swaziland. At 33.4 percent, its HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate is the highest in the world. Life expectancy there has dropped from 60 years to 31 years, and one in three Swazi children is orphaned or left vulnerable by the disease.

The epidemic has also contributed to a food shortage in Swaziland. Last year, around 40 percent of the population needed food aid. Heads of households, able-bodied men and women, are being lost to HIV/AIDS, said Abdoulaye Balde, country representative for the World Food Program.

"What is left are grandparents who are at that time of their lives when they expect to retire and they often need care themselves, but they must again raise a new generation of children," said Balde. "The grandparents are too old to tend the fields, and the children are too small." Thus, the land goes fallow.

Some 80 percent of residents live as subsistence farmers on Swazi Nation Land, with chiefs allocating homesteads provided that families utilize the land. Some chiefs have expelled old and young residents of a homestead following the AIDS-related death of a head of household. The remaining family members are either absorbed into relatives' homesteads or left homeless.

Recent research by the Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division at South Africa's University of KwaZulu-Natal found that because Swaziland is categorized as a middle-income country, it cannot access the support it needs from international donors. The 2007 report, "Reviewing Emergencies for Swaziland," said that while the country is being devastated by HIV/AIDS, its past economic successes limit donor intervention.

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