Kansas City Star: AIDS cases drop, but bad data to blame
The number of AIDS cases worldwide fell by more than 6 million cases this year to 33.2 million, global health officials said Tuesday. But the decline is mostly on paper.
Previous estimates were largely inflated, and the new numbers are the result of a new methodology. They show AIDS cases in 2007 were down from almost 39.5 million last year, according to the World Health Organization and the United Nations AIDS agency.
Although the decline is largely due to revised numbers, U.N. officials said it still showed the AIDS pandemic was losing momentum.
.......
U.N. officials could not rule out future downward corrections. WHO and UNAIDS experts reported 2.5 million newly infected people in 2007. Just a few years ago, that figure was about 5 million.
.......
... Some critics have accused the U.N. of inflating its AIDS numbers, and say the revised figures are long overdue.
"They've finally got caught with their pants down," said Dr. Jim Chin, a clinical professor of epidemiology at the University of California at Berkeley. Chin is a former WHO staffer and the author of "The AIDS Pandemic: The Collision of Epidemiology with Political Correctness."
He said that it was difficult to tell whether the lowered numbers were evidence that AIDS treatment and prevention strategies were working, or whether the decrease was just due to a natural correction of previous overestimates.
Even with the revised figures, "the numbers are probably still on the high side," said Daniel Halperin, an AIDS epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health. Halperin attended the WHO/UNAIDS meeting last week that reviewed the figures, and said that the estimates were getting closer.
Chin and Halperin said AIDS officials may be reluctant to admit that fewer people are infected because it may translate into less funding for efforts to fight the disease.
Comments