Online search trend reveals declining interest in AIDS-related searches relative to HIV-related searches in South Africa (v.3)
Authors: Okunoye Babatunde 
Published: April 2021

BACKGROUNDThe Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is a leading cause of mortality on the African continent and world. HIV and AIDS are among the greatest public health challenges confronting health authorities around the world, with Nigeria and South Africa having the greatest incidence of the disease in the world. There is little research into how Africans meet their health information needs on HIV/AIDS online, and this research gap impacts programming and educational responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. METHODSData on search trends on HIV and AIDS for South Africa was found using the search terms ‘’HIV’ and ‘’AIDS’’ (categories: health, web search), on Google Trends. This was compared with data on estimated adults and children living with HIV, and AIDS-related deaths in South Africa, the Joint United Nations programme on HIV/AIDS, and also with search interest in the topics ‘’HIV’’ and ‘’AIDS’’ on Wikipedia Afrikaans, the most developed local language Wikipedia service in South Africa. Nonparametric statistical tests were conducted to support the trends and associations identified in the data.RESULTS Google Trends shows a statistically significant decline in search interest for AIDS relative to HIV in South Africa. This trend mirrors progress on the ground in South Africa, significantly associated with a decline in AIDS-related deaths and people living longer with the HIV virus. This trend was also replicated on Wikipedia Afrikaans, where there was a greater interest in HIV than AIDS.LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDYThis paper reports on how in general, interest in search terms ‘’HIV’’ and ‘’AIDS’’ mirrors the decline in AIDS cases and the increase in people living with HIV in South Africa. Nevertheless, there is an acknowledgement that the population of health information seekers on HIV/AIDS online may be quite different from the offline population. For instance, not everyone living with HIV/AIDS may be connected online or use search engines, and there is a difference in the number of people connected to the Internet over the years of the study 2004 – 2019. Hence, this paper is not an exact mapping of the online behaviour of all the people living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa. CONCLUSIONThis observed trend might be an indicator that multilateral efforts at combating HIV/AIDS, particularly through awareness raising and behavioural interventions in South Africa is bearing fruit, not just on the ground, but also reflected in the online information seeking on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. A major obstacle to combating the impacts of disease in developing countries is the paucity of high-quality health data, particularly understanding the health information needs of people. Without understanding people’s everyday concerns, health organizations and policymakers are less able to effectively target education and programming efforts for all gender and age-groups. The information needs of people, and their everyday concerns are often expressed via search engine queries as millions go online to meet health information needs.