Which countries receive too little media attention given their AIDS prevalence? We know how much press attention countries receive overall (at least as based on citations in the Kaiser Daily HIV / AIDS Report, published since 1999 and probably the most widely read AIDS news resource). We also know how many people have HIV in each country (as cited by UNAIDS). If we combine these two data types, we can determine "media citations per million cases", giving an idea of relative media attention a country receives. Here is a table of the 40 developing countries with the highest incidence of AIDS ranked from "most neglected by the media" to "least neglected by the media":

	People with HIV	Kaiser Citations	Citations per million cases
Madagascar	140,000	6	43
Sudan	400,000	20	50
Colombia	190,000	10	53
Nigeria	3,600,000	208	58
Chad	200,000	12	60
Dem. Republic of Congo	1,100,000	72	65
Central African Republic	260,000	20	77
Burkina Faso	300,000	24	80
Burundi	250,000	20	80
United Rep. of Tanzania	1,600,000	133	83
Ethiopia	1,500,000	126	84
India	5,100,000	449	88
Cameroon	560,000	57	102
Mozambique	1,300,000	144	111
Malawi	900,000	111	123
Zimbabwe	1,800,000	224	124
Cote d'Ivoire	570,000	79	139
Myanmar	330,000	47	142
Ukraine	360,000	57	158
Lesotho	320,000	63	197
Mali	140,000	28	200
Ghana	350,000	76	217
Russian Federation	860,000	189	220
Angola	240,000	56	233
Zambia	920,000	236	257
Kenya	1,200,000	309	258
South Africa	5,300,000	1461	276
Guinea	140,000	46	329
Haiti	280,000	100	357
Brazil	660,000	237	359
Rwanda	250,000	97	388
Viet Nam	220,000	103	468
Swaziland	220,000	105	477
Namibia	210,000	102	486
China	840,000	445	530
Cambodia	170,000	102	600
Thailand	570,000	468	821
Botswana	350,000	291	831
Uganda	530,000	489	923
Mexico	160,000	159	994

Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo are particularly notable members of this list, representing 10% of the world's cases of HIV between them but garnering only 1% of press citations.

Full spreadsheet with these data is available here.

After several years in gestation, a new World Bank report on AIDS treatment options in India was recently released. HIV/AIDS Treatment and Prevention in India specifically addresses ART, and which policies the Indian government should adopt regarding the procurement and provision of AIDS medicines.

While the press coverage of the report tended to focus on projections of infection ("five million new cases a year in India in 2033"), the main story of the report (and underlying model) is really something else: ART will succeed or fail depending on what happens to condom usage. If ART promotes condom usage (because of tying treatment and prevention programs), then ART will lessen new infections. If ART discourages condom usage (because of disinhibition effects), then ART will increase new infections.

While AIDS economists can pick at the model, and while the Bank is a lightening rod for most policy reports such as this, the key messages regarding the interplay between treatment and prevention shouldn't be overlooked. In addition, the report serves as a well-presented primer on ART policy in environments with low but growing prevalence of HIV -- which is to say, most countries of the world. Kudos to the authors: Mead Over, Peter Heywood, Julian Gold, Indrani Gupta, Subhash Hira, and Elliot Marseille.

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes how ideas spread through society, following "epidemic-like" dynamics. At one point he includes a provocative passage about AIDS, and what would have happened had we not discovered the virus. I include it here as food for thought:

"Not long after The Tipping Point came out, I happened to talk to an epidemiologist, a man who had spent the better part of his professional life battling the AIDS epidemic. He was a thoughtful fellow, and frustrated in the way that someone would be who has had to deal, on a daily basis, with such a terrible disease. We were sitting in a cafe talking about my book, which he had read, and then he said something startling: "I wonder if we would have been better off if we had never discovered the AIDS virus at all?" I don't think he meant that literally, or that he regretted the countless lives that have been saved or prolonged by anti-HIV drugs and the AIDS test. What he meant was this: that the AIDS epidemic is fundamentally a social phenomenon. It spreads because of the beliefs and social structures and poverty and prejudices and personalities of a community, and sometimes getting caught up in the precise biological characteristics of a virus merely serves as a distraction; we might have halted the spread of AIDS far more effectively just by focusing on those beliefs and social structures and poverty and prejudices and personalities."