Excerpt, Smart Sex STI Update, May 2, 2019
by Amalia Plotogea, Helena Swinkels, Shannon McDonald, Evan Adams, Daniele Behn-Smith and Jason Wong
HIV prevention continues to be a public health priority in British Columbia. Incidence and prevalence are two measures of disease frequency used to inform our response to the HIV epidemic. Incidence is the number of new infections that occur in an area over a year, while prevalence is the total number of people living with HIV in that area in that year.
Routine surveillance of HIV is based on new diagnoses of HIV (i.e., case reports of HIV) [BC CDC 2016 Annual HIV Report]. However, because people can be living with HIV for a long time before they are diagnosed, the number of new diagnoses of HIV is only an approximation of HIV incidence. Similarly, accurate prevalence estimates need to account for migration (i.e. people living with HIV moving into or out of BC) and death, which are not available with routine surveillance. For these reasons, mathematical models are needed to incorporate various sources of knowledge about the HIV epidemic to better estimate HIV incidence and prevalence in the population.
Because people can be living with HIV for a long time before they are diagnosed, the number of new diagnoses of HIV is only an approximation of HIV incidence.
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has recently released national estimates of HIV incidence and prevalence for 2016 based on modelling using multiple data sources [Canada Estimates]. We have summarized PHAC’s estimates of HIV incidence and prevalence for the province of British Columbia for 2014 and 2016.
Read the entire post which includes information on:
Estimated HIV Incidence in British Columbia, 1975-2016
Estimated HIV Incidence in British Columbia in 2014 and 2016
Estimated HIV Prevalence in British Columbia in 2014 and 2016
PHAC HIV estimates compared to routine surveillance in BC