Update: Use the HIV presentation material in your own lecture – Download here.
In this talk at the TED conference in Feb. 2009, Hans Rosling explains the HIV epidemic.
He converts the best available data from UNAIDS and WHO into understandable Gapminder bubbles.
The two key messages are that the global HIV epidemic has reached a “steady state” with 1% of the adult world population infected and that there are huge differences in HIV occurrence between and within African countries. Many African countries have the same, relatively low, HIV levels as can be found in most of the world, whereas 50% of the world’s HIV infected persons live in a few countries in Eastern and Southern Africa (with 4% of the world population).
Hans Rosling closes his speech by summarizing probable reasons for the high HIV burden in parts of Eastern and Southern Africa and he also claims that the focus must be on preventing further HIV transmission in these highly affected populations.
Hans also did mention that male circumcision has been proven to reduce the transmission of HIV, but unfortunately this statement had to be removed due to a confusing wording (on Hans’ request).
It’s challenging to summarize the present understanding of the very high HIV levels in a few countries, because there is no clear-cut consensus among researchers. The final remarks (last 2 minutes of the video) will therefore be expanded in a later video lecture.
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