We often seem to get our knickers in a twist over the statistics. Take for example the following quote from the article "'Moderate-risk' Indonesia to see HIV boom: Report" in yesterday's Jakarta Post"
"[National AIDS Commission deputy secretary for development] Kemal said if Indonesia failed to improve its preventive measures against HIV/AIDS infection, the country's number of people living with the disease would rise from the current 12,686 to in excess of 1 million by 2020."
As 'we' (but few of the general population) know, the first figure quoted is the total number of people reported by the Ministry of Health (Depkes) to be HIV-infected as at 31 March 2008, based on reports received from the provinces. (Depkes separately report a total of 24,238 cases followed in 90 of the AIDS referral hospitals as at 31 December 2007, but I'm sure there's good reason for this apparent discrepancy!) It is NOT the number of people living with the disease in Indonesia. The current 'official' Depkes estimate of people infected by HIV in Indonesia is 193,000. This was published in 2006. UNAIDS recently estimated that the number of those infected with HIV in Indonesia as at the end of 2007 was 270,000.
Is the figure of 1 million by 2020 also reported cases? Hopefully the proportion of those infected but unaware will fall from the current 90%, but I doubt we'll do better than identifying 50% by then. If it's reported figure, that could mean that total infections could be 2 million in 2020.
My gut tells me that figure might just be right.
Babé
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