A new report to the United Nations. I was shocked to read: "The steady decline in HIV prevalence among PWID since it peaked in 2008, reflects the efficacy of programmes for harm reduction including provision of free sterile needle and syringes."
I don't think there is any scientific evidence for this assertion.
Let's for a moment, for the purposes of thinking about this, forget about all the other key populations. Prevalence is not the best indicator for this kind of analysis though the quality of sentinel surveillance to determine prevalence is improving. Prevalence can be used to back-calculate incidence. "New infections" or incidence in people who inject drugs is almost unchanged for the past ten or so years. This is the teal coloured part of the bars on page 11. Death or outmigration are the only two reasons that I can think of to explain a fall in prevalence in the presence of unchanged incidence.
If UNAIDS or its cosponsors have any evidence for the assertion that the fall in prevalence in the presence of unchanged incidence is due to free needles and syringes then I would like to see it.
Jamie
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Myanmar Global AIDS Response Progress Report, 2014. National AIDS Programme. (2014)
AIDS Data Hub
Jun 05, 2014 01:38 pm |
The National AIDS Programme (NAP) under the Ministry of Health (MoH) in collaboration with stakeholders and with support from UNAIDS, WHO and UNICEF, led the reporting process in Myanmar. The NAP has worked and consulted together with many partners to complete the data to measure progress and to produce a narrative report.
The reporting process also gained impetus from and builds upon the recently concluded mid-term review (MTR) of the National Strategic Plan on HIV and AIDS (2011–2015) as well as of the MTR of progress against the Ten Targets conducted in April 2013. Coverage and financial data presented in this report are part of the annual data collection cycle and was collected directly from implementing partners.
Read more: http://aidsdatahub.org/Myanmar-Global-AIDS-Response-Progress-Report-2014
