South Africa's HIV epidemic on the rise

The number of pregnant women carrying the HIV virus in South Africa, which has the world's biggest AIDS population, has inched up to 30.2 percent from 29.4 percent last year, health officials said on Nov. 29. (AFP)

A nurse takes a blood sample in March 2011 in a mobile clinic in Kwazulu Natal, South Africa. The number of pregnant women carrying the HIV virus in South Africa, which has the world's biggest AIDS population, has inched up to 30.2 percent from 29.4 percent last year, health officials said Tuesday. (AFP Photo/Stephane de Sakutin)

FILE - In this Thursday, July 13, 2000 file picture, Sister Ellen Dube assists Obed Ndwandwe, who is living with AIDS at his home in Hlabisa 400 kilometers (249 miles) north of Durban, South Africa. Sunday, June 5, 2011 marks 30 years since the first AIDS cases were reported in the United States. Nearly 30 million people have died of AIDS since the first five cases were recognized in Los Angeles in 1981. About 34 million people have HIV now, including more than 1 million in the United States.

Pedestrians pass a wall mural, promoting safe sex in Soweto, South Africa, on the eve of World AIDS Day Tuesday Nov. 30, 2010. South Africa's health minister is increasingly concerned at the cost of coping with AIDS in the country with more HIV-positive citizens than any other.

A woman with children outside the Rahima Moosa hospital, which has a large paediatric HIV unit, in Johannesburg Tuesday Nov. 23, 2010. A U.N. report says the global AIDS epidemic has slowed and cited a drop in new HIV infections with South Africa infection rate, reduced by more than 25 percent in the past decade.

A poster that promotes the use of Condoms in South Africa, seen on a building as workers clean windows, in Cape Town, South Africa, Monday, Nov. 22, 2010. Vatican officials insist it's nothing "revolutionary," but to many other people Pope Benedict XVI's recent comments regarding condom use mark an important moment in the battle against AIDS and an effort by the pontiff to burnish his image and legacy.

In this photo taken on Oct. 21, 2010, an unidentified man smokes a concoction called "whoonga" in the Kwadebeka Township near Durban, South Africa. AIDS patients in South Africa are being robbed of their lifesaving drugs so that these can be mixed with marijuana and smoked, authorities and health experts say.

File-In this photo taken Friday Dec. 19, 2008, a patient lays in her bed in the hospice at the Tapalogo project in Phokeng, Rustenburg, South Africa. The bleak burden of AIDS in South Africa is extraordinary, but there is reason for hope, a researcher who has mapped the cost of controlling the epidemic said in an interview. A report Robert Hecht helped prepare, which was released Friday, Nov. 19, 2010, concludes reversing the country's deeply entrenched AIDS epidemic is "extremely difficult, if not impossible, in the coming years." The nation of almost 50 million has more people than any other country with the virus that causes AIDS, an estimated 5.7 million HIV-positive citizens. (AP photo/Denis Farrell-File)

This photo taken on Friday Sept. 17, 2010 shows an 18-year-old orphan, who's mother died of AIDS when he was 14, in Pretoria, South Africa. Experts say there is an emerging population of teenage orphans whose needs are not being met. The government's rollout of anti-retroviral drugs in 2004 has kept children infected with HIV alive for longer, whereas without access to medication one-third of children with HIV die before age one and half die before age two, according to AVERT, an AIDS charity.