Natural deaths in South Africa's overcrowded prisons have rocketed by 584% in the past five years, mostly as a result of AIDS. There were 3000 prisoners who were known to be infected among the 162000 convicts making up the prison population. Postmortem examination on the prisoners who are dying of natural causes shows that they appear to have been caused by AIDS in most of the cases.
The lack of mandatory testing meant that the real incidence of HIV/AIDS is not known.
There are not a specific budget for the treatment of AIDS, but it is noted that the increase in "natural deaths" in prisons is definitely putting the department's medical budget under considerable pressure.
Based on that, unless a cure is found, deaths of prisoners caused by AIDS will amount to 7000 prisoners a year in five years and 45000 a year in 10 years.