India's previous AIDS data was overestimated and flawed. AIDS cases are much lower in the revised data.
U.N. Agency Denies Inflating Cases of H.I.V. DeliberatelyBy DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: November 21, 2007
After releasing new figures showing that the global AIDS epidemic is smaller than it previously reported, the United Nations’ AIDS-fighting agency denied yesterday that it had inflated estimates for years in an alarmist effort to raise funds.
Officials at the agency, Unaids, were asked about the accusation — a not uncommon grumble in the heavily politicized war on AIDS — at a news conference about the revised estimates.
Dr. Paul De Lay, Unaids’s director of monitoring and policy, replied that the idea that earlier estimates were deliberately inflated was “absurd.”
The revision, disclosed in the news media on Monday night ahead of yesterday’s official announcement by the AIDS agency and the World Health Organization, puts the number of people infected with H.I.V. at 33.2 million, down from 39.5 million.
The lower figure is based on newer, more accurate surveys in India and several African countries. The costly, time-consuming household surveys made it clear that previous estimates, gleaned mainly from tests on women in urban clinics, were too high.http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/world/21aids.html AIDS cases drop, but mostly due to revised dataPrevious estimates of 39 million were inflated, global health officials sayupdated 9:35 p.m. ET Nov. 19, 2007
LONDON - 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.
"For the first time, we are seeing a decline in global AIDS deaths," said Dr. Kevin De c@ck, director of WHO's AIDS department.
The two agencies will issue their annual AIDS report Wednesday after convening an expert meeting last week in Geneva to examine their data collection methods.
Much of the drop is due to revised numbers from India — which earlier this year slashed its numbers in half, from about 6 million cases to about 3 million — and to new data from several countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
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