Quote from Matthew Black :

Letter
Monday, December 8, 2003  
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Aids data: Most of it is lies,
damned lies and statistics
HIV/Aids has truly impacted on the lives of each one of us in one way
or another and the fight must be won.
Up-to-date facts and figures are a prerequisite in any effective
communication on most subjects, and HIV/Aids is no exception.

Seven hundred Kenyans dying every day, three in five minutes,
prevalence rates, and rates of incidence are common terms to us. Such
data is bandied around with such adroitness and vigour that sometimes
it is as if we are fighting a series of mathematical algorithms rather
than an actual virus.

Whilst there is value in using numbers to describe phenomena, it is
essential that when we do so, we understand exactly what these figures
represent.

It was former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who once said:
"There are three types of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics".

This could not be truer for some of the so-called "facts" hurled at us
by reputable experts and international agencies in the build-up to
World Aids Day.

In the Sunday Nation of November 30, Arthur Okwemba quoted the
Executive Director of an Aids support group from Uganda claiming that
there has been a fall in HIV prevalence in Uganda "from more than 30
per cent in 1995 to nearly 5 per cent today".

This translated in real terms, means that of the 23 million
inhabitants of Uganda, almost seven million were HIV positive in 1995
and eight years later, the figure stands at slightly more than one
million.

This means that there are six million less HIV positive Ugandans today
than in 1995. If you factor in the Ugandans who acquired the virus
after 1995, this leaves a simply enormous body of people who are no
longer HIV positive. What has happened to the Ugandans who do not
appear in the latest figures? Did they leave Uganda, die or were they
cured of HIV?

If the prevalence figures are inverted, it does not say much for
Uganda's widely commended HIV/Aids response if it is unable to prevent
the deaths of 800,000 HIV positive people a year.

In Kenya, it has been stated that HIV/Aids had, by 1998, reduced life
expectancy by 13 years to only 51. Taking HIV prevalence in Kenya of
12 per cent and applying a simple weighted average, it is easily
proved that this assertion is a mathematical impossibility. In fact,
for such a drop in life expectancy to be caused by HIV alone, HIV
positive Kenyans would have to have a life expectancy of minus 44
years. That is, they would have been dead a whole two generations
before they were born! We cannot be so foolish as to use baseless and
incongruous statistics in our arguments.

Even the great UN, in its much quoted Aids Epidemic Update released
recently, makes statements that, on closer inspection, are
questionable.

It is simply not good enough to use tests on pregnant women taken in
antenatal clinics as the main source for raw data used to estimate
national prevalence in the way the UNAids study has.

People tested in antenatal clinics are, by the very fact they are
women who have had unprotected sex, a high-risk group. The argument
presented in the Epidemic Update in justifying the assumptions made by
the UN in producing their estimates using this method is both weak and
flawed.

What is needed is a wide reaching and aggressive campaign to derive
comprehensive and accurate figures on the scourge that will allow us
to plan our response based on knowledge and not conjecture.

MATTHEW BLACK,
Kenya Aids Watch Institute.

http://www.nationaudio.com/News/DailyNation/08122003/Letters/Letters081220035.html

Look too at the fact that Uganda has the higher growth rate in
world... (3,5%/year)

Unlike you Paul I am interested in any data not just that data that
wholeheartedly supports my beliefs.

Though you are flat wrong in your interpretation of this article. You also
completely ignore the fact that it states that the reason for the decline is
due to the DEATH of AIDS patients, yet you claim AIDS doesn't exist and can
not kill people.

Gary Stein