I thought I would share this little piece of optimism with you, not so that you will go on an African Love Frenzy (the risks are still severe), but so that you can travel without being overly paranoid about getting infected, or overly dismal about the percieved suffering arround you. Don't get me wrong, the situation is still bad as hell, just not as bad as first thought, and also getting better. Its gotta be good fpr something, right?

I sourced the following information from the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet. I've taken the liberty to edit out the stuff of less interest/relevance, and translate it in my own lingo. If you want to read it in its original form and don't understand Norwegian, take a course

A fresh study financed by USAID and other corganisations, undertaken by ORC Marco, concludes that previous UN and WHO repports vastly exaggerated the African AIDS problem, mainly because of studies using poor data collection methods, leading to studies with poor reliability and validity (this new study is supposedly muh more reliable and valid, but what do I know.The findings of the new study is supported by numerous other independant experts and organisations, so I won't argue against it).

The UN and WHO have been blaimed for excagerating the situation to get more money flowing. Washington Post refers to the study and writes that UNAIDS denies having had any politial or financial motives behind the inaccurate repports. The UN has repportedly used only small and limited population samples for entire countries, with pessimistic conclusions about the extent of the epidemic. Several independant studies have been performed, indicating that the UN numbers were way off. The new study makes a closer examination of 16 countries and conlude that the UN numbers are too high.

AIDS in Africa has never been as Galopping as first thought, and have never reached the astronomical proportions often believed. In fact, several studies in East Africa indicates that the epidemic is on a decline, and never reahed the estimates UNAIDS had for the region. In adition, the UN have to adjust its numbers for its core area, namely central Africa.

The study finds that there are vast differences. The study shows that the epidemic is more closely tied to urbanised areas than previously thought, and that lack of data from the rural areas, have led to wrong numbers. Also, tests of pregnant women were commonly used as a source of data, leading to highly unrepresentative and exaggurated data (over representation of young sexual active women).

Population studies performed with a representative selection of the population indicate vastly different infection rates. A study in Kenya indiates 8% and not the 15% calculated from the use of pregnant women. In line with the National studies, the number was reduced to 6.7% in 2004. In Burkina Faso the UN meant that 6.5% was infected, while the new studies indicates 1.8%. For Sierra Leone the gap was 7% in 2002 and only 0,9% in the new figures.

The Boston Globe repported in 2004 that the number of AIDS infeted may be exagurated as much as 25-40%

In Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the numbers have gone down.

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