At a website that evaluates the use of statistics in new stories, I found
this:

www.stats.org/newsletters/0007/africa/htm

Death In the Shadowlands (author not named)

"The criteria for declaring an AIDS case in Africa do not include an actual
blood test to determine whether or not the patient is HIV positive.

"According to what is known as the 'Bangui definition,' named for the city in
the Central African Republic where it was adopted in 1985, a diagnosis of
AIDS could be given in the presence of features such as 'prolonged fevers
(for a month or more), weight loss of 10 percent or greater, and prolonged
diarrhea.'  But no blood test is required.  That is, deaths that heretofore
were attributed to malaria, dysentery, or tuberculosis, for instance, may now
be classified and accounted as AIDS deaths. . . .

"It would compound one assured (but still shadowy in scale) public health
tragedy if the world were to mobilize to 'save' Africa -- only to find that
it had sent condoms and the AIDS drug AZT, when what was most needed on the
docks on Maputo and Luanda were clean water and antibiotics. . . ."

Alice Martino,
in central New York State
mailto:[log in to unmask]

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