Documenting HIV/AIDS From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe

The U.S. Census Bureau is best known for providing a variety of data on the nation’s people and economy but it also plays a vital role in recording data on the world at large.

This week, the Census Bureau will showcase its HIV/AIDS Surveillance Data Base before the world’s largest health gathering: The 22nd International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

For more than 30 years, the Census Bureau has produced the database, an annually updated tool now available online.

It compiles data on HIV prevalence, incidence, and AIDS cases and deaths for 206 countries and areas around the world, with the exception of Northern America and U.S. territories.

This year’s release brings the database’s total to over 200,000 data records from more than 19,000 sources. These data records provide HIV/AIDS statistics for population groups rather than individuals. It includes data from scientific journal articles, reports, and conference presentations.

A new feature of this year’s release is the addition of an interactive mapping tool that allows users to navigate the various types of data records by country (shown below).

Despite the fact that the African continent bears much of the HIV/AIDS burden, the map above shows that a large amount of HIV/AIDS data comes from the world’s most populous countries, China and India.

Over 18,000 of the database’s more than 200,000 records come from mainland China, followed by over 14,000 records from India.

Here are just a few other examples from the database that show how we document HIV/AIDS around the world from A to Z:

• Afghanistan: The database includes almost 100 records relating to HIV/AIDS prevalence, incidence, and AIDS cases for Afghanistan beginning in 1987. HIV prevalence ranges from 0 percent to a high of 18 percent observed in a 2009 sample of intravenous drug users in the city of Herat.
• Nicaragua: The 157 records for Nicaragua included in the database date back to 1984. A prevalence as high as 22 percent was seen in a sample of youth drug users from 2007 to 2008, and men who have sex with men living in the capital city had an incidence rate of over 14 new HIV infections per 100 persons per year between 2000 and 2002.
• Zimbabwe: HIV prevalence rates reported for Zimbabwe start from 1968 based on tests of stored blood samples, and over 3,000 records are included in the database. Prevalence rates exceed 90 percent in certain patient groups. Incidence rates as high as 23 new infections per 100 people in a year have been documented in a rural population in 1997.
  

Dzifa Adjaye-Gbewonyo is a Statistician/Demographer in the Population Division at the Census Bureau.