Public universities in South Africa are divided into three types: traditional universities, which offer theoretically oriented university degrees; universities of technology (formerly called "technikons"), which offer vocational oriented diplomas and degrees; and comprehensive universities, which offer both types of qualification. There are 23 public universities in South Africa: 11 traditional universities, 6 universities of technology and 6 comprehensive universities. Under apartheid, schools for black people were subject to discrimination through inadequate funding and a separate syllabus called "Bantu Education" which was only designed to give them sufficient skills to work as labourers. In 2004, South Africa started reforming its tertiary education system, merging and incorporating small universities into larger institutions, and renaming all tertiary education institutions "university". By 2015, 1.4 million students in higher education have benefited from a financial aid scheme which was promulgated in 1999. According to the South African Institute of Race Relations, the life expectancy in 2009 was 71 years for a white South African and 48 years for a black South African. The healthcare spending in the country is about 9% of GDP. About 84% of the population depends on the public healthcare system, which is beset with chronic human resource shortages and limited resources. About 20% of the population uses private healthcare. Only 16% of the population is covered by medical aid schemes. The rest pay for private care "out of pocket" or through in-hospital-only plans. The three dominant hospital groups, Mediclinic, Life Healthcare and Netcare, together control 75% of the private hospital market. According to the 2015 UNAIDS Report, South Africa has an estimated seven million people living with HIV – more than any other country in the world. In 2018, HIV prevalence—the percentage of people living with HIV—among adults (15–49 years) was 20.4% and in the same year 71000 people died from an AIDS-related illness. A 2008 study revealed that HIV/AIDS infection in South Africa is distinctly divided along racial lines: 13.6% of blacks are HIV-positive, whereas only 0.3% of whites have the disease. Most deaths are experienced by economically active individuals, resulting in many AIDS orphans who in many cases depend on the state for care and financial support. It is estimated that there are 1,200,000 orphans in South Africa. The link between HIV, a virus spread primarily by sexual contact, and AIDS was long denied by former president Thabo Mbeki and his health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who insisted that the many deaths in the country are due to malnutrition, and hence poverty, and not HIV.