A number of US newspapers today, Saturday 1st December, World AIDS Day, are reporting that the US federal government is about to increase its estimate of the annual incidence rate of HIV/AIDS in the country by as much as 50 per cent.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expeced to announce a new estimate for new infections of HIV in 2005 in the region 55,000 to 60,000 a year, reflecting an increase of 20 to 50 per cent on the old figure of 40,000 new infections a year.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a number of outside researchers and publich health experts have been briefed with these figures, but were asked to be cautious about using them, since they could be revised upwards or downwards after peer review and publishing in a scientific journal.
The Washington Post said it had been in contact with two sources familiar with the briefing and that the higher national estimates were extrapolated from data from 19 states and large cities.
According to the Wall Street Journal, CDC director for HIV/AIDS Prevention Division, Robert Janssen, made no comment on the new estimates. He said they could change following peer review.
The CDC has been giving a figure of 40,000 new HIV infections a year in the US for nearly a decade, but recent improvements in how estimates are made, including better ways of testing blood for HIV that can tell whether someone has recently acquired the virus, have led to the upward revision, as opposed to “real” increases in incidence rates, it appears from the newspaper reports.
These reports come hot on the heels of UNAIDS and the World Health Organization (WHO) announcing ten days ago, that they have lowered their estimates of how many people are living with HIV/AIDS worldwide.
THe UNAIDS/WHO report suggests the more accurate estimate is 33 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS, and not 40 million given in last year’s figures. They attributed the revision to improved methods of data collection and better reporting systems from countries for which estimates had to be made before.
That report also revised downwards the estimated global new infection rate for HIV by 40 per cent, to 2.5 million people newly infected worldwide. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times at the time, these figures were also revised because of improved methodology, and also because of reductions in incidence.
The UNAIDS/WHO report suggests that new cases of HIV peaked in the late 1990s and have been coming down since 2001.
To the average member of the public the global and local scenarios about HIV and AIDS are becoming increasingly confusing and appear to conflict each other. Another report out today in the Lancet by a global health expert, suggests that we are losing the global race against AIDS/HIV, and that many of the widely held beliefs about HIV and AIDS are myths, for instance that sex workers pose higher risks than people who have multiple partners.
One wonders if this rather complex maelstrom of information and reports is also making the decision makers nervous, since they touch on politically sensitive issues, and any suggestion that the big organizations don’t know what they are doing will shake confidence and perhaps make until now generous aid donors tighten their purse strings.
The report in the Wall Street Journal suggests not, since it mentions that a spokesperson for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said the epidemic was still huge and resources insufficient. “We are not changing our priorities,” they said. And a spokesman for the US government said that despite the new estimates, President Bush is hoping to double the funding for the epidemic in 2009 to 2013.
Click here for Wall Street Journal Story “Upward Revision of U.S. AIDS Cases Likely”.
Click here for Washington Post Story “AIDS Estimates Rise in U.S.”
Written by: Catharine Paddock