From: Luke Whitaker <llw31@smhms.imperial.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: AIDS Sweeps Asia Scare is Overblown
Note: Copyright 1992, Dan R. Greening. Non-commercial reproduction allowed.
Archive-Number: 6663
Organization: unspecified
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 92 17:33:43 GMT

In <1992Dec15.174222.22974@cs.ucla.edu> portal!cup.portal.com!Arthur_T_Hu@uunet.UU.NET writes:

>Abstract - Current estimates that claim Asia will soon claim half of new
>AIDS cases are completely without basis, but universally accepted without
>question. Claims that this is proof that Asian Americans need to fear AIDS
>is absurd because AIDS among Asian Americans is already higher than among
>almost any nation in Asia - it just gets less publicity.

This seems to conflate two different things. 
1) The predication that "Asia will soon claim half of new AIDS cases". 
2) This is a reason why Asian Americans should fear AIDS.

Statement 1) may be true, although it is a fairly extreme position, given 
the size of the epidemic in Africa - depends what is meant by 'soon' though.

Statement 2) appears rather illogical. Asian Americans should be concerned
about HIV/AIDS because of the prevalence of HIV in America, not Asia (unless
they tend to travel to Asia when they have sex, but this doesn't seem very
likely).

>AIDS Sweeps Asia?

>Until recently AIDS was considered to be nonexistent in Asia, with only 
>413 cases of AIDS recorded by 1989. But now the World Health 
>Organization (WHO)  and Doctor Jonathan Mann of Harvard's International 
>AIDS Center  predicts that Asia will soon overtake Africa with nearly 
>half of all HIV infections worldwide by the year 2000.   However, some 
>of the scarier predictions just don't match up with the facts. And when 
>Dr. Mann is ready to declare Indonesia is on the verge of a national 
>epidemic on the basis of only 12 known cases.

[Lots of stuff deleted]

There appears to be some confusion between cases of AIDS and cases of HIV in
this posting. The AIDS epidemic represents where the HIV epidemic was perhaps
ten years ago. In the US, where HIV infection has occurred largely amongst
homosexual men, the rate of increase of AIDS is slowing. This is probably
because a very large percentage of the most at-risk population has now been
infected. Those gay men who are not infected have probably seen enough of there
friends die to be under few illusions as to what safe sex is all about.

In Africa certainly, and probably in some parts of Asia, it appears for diverse
reasons that the heterosexual population is at high risk. This means that the
incidence of HIV may continue to increase exponentially for some time to come.
Given that the number of AIDS cases lags the number of HIV cases by between 5
and 10 years, and that the vast majority of HIV cases are likely to go
undetected in developing countries, then the small number of AIDS cases seen
NOW is no reason for complacency about the future. It is surely better to do
everything possible to avoid a catastrophy before it happens rather than try
and pick up the pieces afterwards - in Africa it is happening now.

>World AIDS - Harvard U. International AIDS Center predicts
>By the year 2000, AIDS in the World estimates that the largest proportion o
>HIV infections will be in Asia (42%), surpassing sub-Saharan Africa (31%),
>Carribean (6)
>                              HIV infect         AIDS               HIV/AID
>                              92 est    95 proj  92 est     95 proj
>North America                   1167000  1495000     257500  534000    4.5
>West Europe                      718000  1186000      99000  279500    7.3
>Australia/Oceania                 28000    40000       4500   11500    6.2
>Latin America                    995000  1407000     173000  417500    5.8
>Sub-Saharan Africa              7803000 11449000    1367000 3277500    5.7
>Caribbean                        310000   474000      43000  121000    7.2
>East Europe                       27000    44000       2500    9500   10.8
>Southeast Mediterranean           35000    59000       3500   12500   10.0
>Northeast Asia                    41000    80000       3500   14500   11.7
>Southeast Asia                   675000  1220000      65000  240500   10.4
>Total                          11799000 17454000    2018500 4918000    5.8
>Asia total                       716000  1300000      68500  255000   10.5

Newsgroups: sci.med.aids