Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 101)
THURSDAY 8 JUNE 2000
DR JULIAN
LOB-LEVYT,
MR BOB
GROSE, MR
PAUL ACKROYD
AND MS
JOANNA GRAHAM
Ms King
100. Could you give some idea of what those
prevalence rates would be amongst the at risk groups?
(Mr Grose) I could not pull one off the top of my
head specifically for Bangladesh. I can compare it, let us say
with somewhere like Cambodia, which is higher and there amongst
those high risk behaviour groups it is now up around 30 or 40
per cent. I suspect it is lower in Bangladesh.
(Mr Ackroyd) May I put it in context? There are about
50 million in Bangladesh probably, something like that, so a one
per cent incidence is going to be a large number of people. We
certainly hope it is nothing like that level and if it were at
that level we should be seeing much more indication of it. Although
the figures may be understated because the surveillance systems
are not good—
Mr Robathan
101. The data down here is not one per cent,
it is 0.03 per cent and I just think that we are in danger of
stumbling in the dark if we are not able to appreciate the data.
It is my opinion that in sub-Saharan Africa this is much, much
the most important issue for sub-Saharan Africa, leave aside war
and any other development issues. Would you agree?
(Dr Lob-Levyt) Yes, I would agree with you.
Chairman: That is a very suitable answer
to finish on. May I thank you for drawing up this document which
obviously took a lot of time and effort and I am glad you found
it helpful to your work in itself. I should like to thank you
for that very hard work and thank you very much for helping us
to understand this extremely difficult and tragic epidemic. Thank
you very much indeed.
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