By the year 2010 between five and seven million South Africans will have died of AIDS, more than double the number who will perish from all the other causes of death combined.
That startling prediction and a description of AIDS as an epidemic of "shattering dimensions" is contained in the long-awaited Medical Research Council report on the impact of AIDS on adult morality in South Africa.
Released yesterday after sustained pressure from the media in the face of apparent government attempts to play down the threat, the report says AIDS has already become the "single biggest cause of death" in South Africa.
Its sombre prediction of an exponential increase in AIDS-related deaths is subject to the proviso that there is no active intervention to prevent AIDS.
The report estimates that 40 per cent of all deaths between the ages of 19 and 45 were due to AIDS last year.
In his preface to the report, Medical Research Council president, Mr Malegepuru Makgoba, notes that the pattern of mortality from natural causes in South Africa has "shifted from the old to the young over the last decade, particularly for young women".
But, the report continues, a rising number of AIDS-related deaths is evident among men as well. "Mortality in the 30-39 age group in 1999/2000 was nearly two times higher than in 1985".
The five authors considered alternative explanations to AIDS for the rise in mortality but "found none of them plausible".
The report's findings raise questions about President Thabo Mbeki's insistence, during an interview with the BBC in August, that the single biggest cause of death in South Africa was violence. As president he should have been kept informed of the research by the Medical Research Council - which produced several drafts of its reports, some of which were leaked to the media - particularly in view of his interest in AIDS and his initiative in establishing an international advisory panel.