From Behind the Veil of a Public Health Crisis: HIV/AIDSs in the Muslim World by the Seattle-based “National Bureau of Asian Research”, June 2005
Already a generation into the worldwide HIV epidemic, it is still impossible to describe with any accuracy the magnitude of the AIDS problem in the Islamic expanse. Officially, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates the total HIV population of North Africa, the Middle East, and predominantly Muslim Asia at nearly one million people today. That number, however, is severely understated because UNAIDS figures depend upon inadequate surveillance data—thus causing a lack of information to be construed as a lack of infection.
Indeed, systematic surveillance of HIV is sorely lacking in most of the Muslim world. Testing is done within limited populations (such as prisoners), on a volunteer basis, or piecemeal (often with foreign funding) by scientists and public health officials who—in hopes of stopping its spread—are trying to comprehend the extent of the epidemic in their own countries. In countries with notoriously poor testing, a low HIV-prevalence is not necessarily indicative of a small public health problem, but is more likely due to inadequate testing and reporting.
Additionally, national HIV statistics (or statistics of any other disease) often do not reflect the extent of the disease in individual cities or towns or amongst select groups of people. For example, national infection rates in Malaysia, as cited in UNAIDS databases, hold national infection rates to be under one percent of adults. However, this statistic masks the fact that more than 36 percent of commercial sex workers in Malaysia’s northern Perlis State were already HIV-positive in 1996.1 Moreover, the HIV totals published by UNAIDS are numbers negotiated with local governments—thus, leaders of governments that do not want to hear bad news can potentially influence published figures concerning their countries.
aei.org/docLib/20050608_eberstadtNBRreport.pdf
If we do accept the figure of 1 million muslims infected, and the figure of 1.3 billion muslims, then the infection rate is about 0.08%.
Crumpy:
And, by implication, does Islam do a better job at preventing the type of conduct that causes AIDS?
I don’t think we have enough information to know.
