HIV error
5 June 2011
Readers of Sunday's (5-Jun-2011) SCMP might have been surprised by an article, accredited to Agence France-Press (AFP) and Associated Press (AP). It says:
"According to a new UNAids report, between 2008 and 2010, HIV among sex workers increased from 44 per cent to 50 per cent, and among gay men it rose from 30 per cent to 36 per cent."
Are 1 in 2 sex workers and more than 1 in 3 gay men in the world HIV-positive? No. Only in a few countries do the numbers approach that, and those are countries which have the highest HIV prevalence in the adult population, such as Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, where about one quarter of adults (aged 15-49) are HIV-positive. Clearly the SCMP editors need to apply a bit of common sense to syndicated content. But how do such glaring errors arise? Well a bit of searching takes us to a syndicated AP article by Edith M. Lederer, which ran in Forbes and numerous other outlets on 3-Jun-2011:
"According to the report, between 2008 and 2010, HIV among sex workers increased from 44 percent to 50 percent, and among gay men it rose from 30 percent to 36 percent"
But an updated version in the Washington Post on 4-Jun-2011 says:
"the proportion of countries conducting systematic surveillance of HIV among high-risk populations increased between 2008 and 2010: from 44 percent to 50 percent for sex workers, and from 30 percent to 36 percent for gay men."
and this in turn is derived from the WHO/UNAIDS/UNICEF Progress Report 2010, which states in Chapter 3:
"Of 149 low- and middle-income countries surveyed, 42 reported conducting surveillance for HIV among injecting drug users versus 41 countries in 2008. The number of countries that reported conducting HIV surveillance among men who have sex with men increased from 44 to 54, and among sex workers from 65 to 74."
and if you get your calculator out, you will find that those numbers translate into the correct percentages, so even the Washington Post version fails to state that this is about the level of surveillance in low- and middle-income countries, not all countries. Surveillance in higher-income countries is almost certainly higher.
© Webb-site.com, 2011
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