Aids could now be the most common cause of death in KwaZulu-Natal's hospitals, the province's superintendent-general Professor Ronnie Green-Thompson told parliament's health portfolio committee on Wednesday.
He said the leading single cause was cardiovascular disease, but the next four categories were all HIV-related infectious diseases.
If one added these up, HIV/Aids became "almost the first cause of death in our hospitals", he told the committee.
He said afterwards that it might in fact be the most common cause of death.
Green-Thompson said the one-in-three HIV infection rate, found in victims of unnatural death who passed through Durban's Gale Street mortuary, gave a good idea of the prevalence among adults in the province.
Results of the latest antenatal clinic HIV survey in the province are expected to be made public soon.
Democratic Party spokeswoman on Aids, Sandy Kalyan, said on Wednesday that the national health department's admission to the committee earlier this week that 40 percent of last year's Aids budget was not spent, defied logic.
"This goes directly to the heart of the government's commitment to fight Aids and to stop the spread of this deadly disease," she said.
The biggest offender had been the government's Aids Action Programme, which spent only a quarter of its budget. Despite the health department's failure to properly implement the programme, this component of the budget received a 73 percent increase this year, Kalyan said.
At the same time, the budget for non-government organisations, who did "the real work" in Aids prevention, was cut by 43 percent.
The DP believed the department could not cope with the situation and that at least some of this money needed to go to the NGO's, who had the experience and infrastructure to deal with Aids.
Inkatha Freedom Party health spokeswoman Dr Ruth Rabinowitz said she found the department's failure to spend the money alarming.
"There are serious gaps in the Aids policy; like much of the populace, government still appears to be in denial about the Aids monster," she said. - Sapa