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InterPress News Service (IPS) - Monday, 18 November 1996
Almost three-quarters of those cases have been in the United States, PAHO says in a new report which estimates that there are now more people infected in Latin America with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) than in the United States.
Of the 698,199 confirmed cases in the hemisphere, more than 411,000 people in the region have died from AIDS, according to PAHO, which serves as the regional office of the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO).
But the total number of actual -- as opposed to confirmed cases
-- may be much higher, according to Dr. Fernando Zacarias, coordinator of PAHO's AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases program here.
"Certain factors, such as underdiagnosis, underreporting and delayed reporting affect the completeness of the data," says Zacarias. "We are working continuously to improve the quality and completeness of the information, to be able to analyze and provide a better profile of the epidemic," he said.
Underreporting generally takes place more in the poorer nations of the hemisphere, according to PAHO officials.
The country with by far the largest number of confirmed AIDS cases -- over 513,000 -- is the United States. It is followed by Brazil with about 83,000; Mexico with almost 30,000; Canada with about 14,000; and Argentina with about 8,500 cases.
Colombia has reported 6,811 cases; Venezuela, 6,028; Honduras, 5,451; Haiti, 4,967; Peru, 4,633; Dominican Republic, 3,288; Bahamas, 2,205; and Trinidad and Tobago, 2,083. Other countries reported less than 2,000, according to the report.
Of the total number of confirmed cases, 686,021 were adults, and 12,178 were children, according to the report.
Worldwide, about 7.7 million people have been afflicted with AIDS, according to WHO estimates. More than 75 percent of the total are African. WHO estimates that Latin America accounts for about six percent of the total; and the United States about seven percent.
In the Americas, men have been much more hard hit by the disease than women, although there has been a significant variation within the region.
In Andean countries, the ratio between men with the disease and women afflicted with AIDS was 5 to 1; in Mexico, 7 to 1; in the southern cone, 4 to 1. In Central America and Brazil, the ratio was 3 to 1; in the Caribbean; only 2 to 1.
PAHO analyzed the distribution of confirmed AIDS cases by risk factors, finding that in the Andean region, 61.5 percent of cases were associated with homosexual or bisexual risk facts; in the southern cone, the figure was 45.7 percent; and in Brazil, 44.3 percent.
But in Central American countries, the distribution of AIDS cases by risk factor was 61.1 percent heterosexual and 24.3 percent homosexual or bisexual; while in the Caribbean, the figure was 75.6 percent heterosexual, and 15.1 percent homosexual or bisexual.
"Transmission attributed to intravenous drug use is common in the southern cone and Brazil with 29.7 percent and 26.5 percent, respectively," according to the report.
The average rate of reported AIDS cases per million in population in Latin America was 45; in the Caribbean, 241; and in North America, 141, according to the report, but rates for individual countries vary widely.
In the last year with complete data, they ranged from 1,183 cases per million in the Bahamas to 1.8 in Bolivia.
On a global level, the estimated distribution of people infected with HIV includes 1.2 million in North America; 330,000 in the Caribbean; 1.6 million in Latin America; 640,000 in Western Europe; 31,000 in Eastern Europe; five million in South Asia; 220,000 in North Africa; and 19 million in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to WHO.
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