HIV prevalence estimates: the new deal in Sub-Saharan Africa since 2000 - Larmarange, Joseph (The Political Economy of HIV/AIDS in Developing Countries: TRIPS, Public Health Systems and Free Access)
HIV prevalence and incidence data are necessary at different levels: monitoring the epidemics, understanding their dynamics, determining priorities of actions, modeling AIDS impact on population… In macro-economy, HIV prevalence is often an important parameter of the models. HIV prevalence data are often used for evaluation, planning and advocacy and so their uses are very political. Since 2000, UNAIDS estimates changes have reflected improvements in methodology used. For example, the estimated number of persons living with HIV worldwide in 2007 was 33.2 million [30.6–36.1 million] (UNAIDS 2007), a reduction of 16% compared with the estimate published in 2006 (39.5 million [34.7–47.1 million]) (UNAIDS 2006). This difference is largely due to better data and assumptions about HIV epidemics. So, UNAIDS estimates from different reports cannot be directly compared and apparent trends does not reflect HIV epidemic trends. This paper proposes to review and discuss the different sources of HIV data and estimation methodology used.
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