• Li-Xia Lou, Yi Chen, Chao-Hui Yu, You-Ming Li, and Juan Ye.
• Department of Ophthalmology, The Second Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
• Am J Infect Control. 2014 Oct 1; 42 (10): 1044-8.

BackgroundHIV/AIDS is a worldwide threat to human health with mortality, prevalence, and incidence rates varying widely. We evaluated the association between the global HIV/AIDS epidemic and national socioeconomic development.MethodsWe obtained global age-standardized HIV/AIDS mortality, prevalence, and incidence rates from World Health Statistics Report of the World Health Organization. The human development indexes (HDIs) of 141 countries were obtained from a Human Development Report. Countries were divided into 4 groups according to the HDI distribution. We explored the association between HIV/AIDS epidemic and HDI information using Spearman correlation analysis, regression analysis, and the Kruskal-Wallis test.ResultsHIV/AIDS mortality, prevalence, and incidence rates were inversely correlated with national HDI (r = -0.675, -0.519, and -0.398, respectively; P < .001), as well as the 4 indicators of HDI (ie, life expectancy at birth, mean years of schooling, expected years of schooling, and gross national income per capita). Low HDI countries had higher HIV/AIDS mortality, prevalence, and incidence rates than that of medium, high, and very high HDI countries. Quantile regression results indicated that HDI had a greater negative effect on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in countries with more severe HIV/AIDS epidemic.ConclusionsLess-developed countries are likely to have more severe HIV/AIDS epidemic. There is a need to pay more attention to HIV/AIDS control in less-developed countries, where lower socioeconomic status might have accelerated the HIV/AIDS epidemic more rapidly.Copyright © 2014 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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