On Empirical Modelling of HIV/AIDS Pandemic with Application to East Africa

Abstract

A number of models have been proposed to study the projections of HumanImmunodeficiency Virus(HIV)/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrom(AIDS) epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. In this paper we propose the use of the statistical approaches, curve fitting and back projection, which have been widely applied in projecting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the developed countries. The reported data on the annual incidences of AIDS diagnoses for both Kenya and Uganda are used to determine trend patterns of the expected HIV/AIDS epidemic in the two countries. The results are quite similar to those obtained using the behaviour based dynamical compartmental (or the demographic ) models on the same epidemic.

Keywords: HIV/AIDS, back projection, incubation period distribution, likelihood function, maximum likelihood estimation.


(Af. J. of Science and Technology: 2003 4(1): 104-109)