Bikram Patnaik
Visualization Link: HIV: Forgotten Epidemic
More PEOPLE DIED OF AIDS IN AFRICA THAN IN ALL WARS ON THE CONTINENT‘ –UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan
Yes you heard it right! As a matter of fact Sub-Saharan Africa carries a disproportionate burden of HIV, accounting for more than 70% of the global burden of infection.
Well, if you grew up in the 1990s, you practically absorbed a degree in AIDS studies just by existing—or at least that’s what it felt like. The years since then have brought better tests and treatments, and we now know more about the virus, but that information isn’t common knowledge. HIV and AIDS has still not fallen off the radar and continues to impact the lives of people in various corners of the globe.
With the help of this visualization we will discuss if we can justify our main claim with proper evidence or is it just another eye-catching headline story.The visualization which we are about to discuss reviews data from 85 countries and compares percentage of adults vs wealth for the past 4 decades. The vertical axis shows the percentage of adults infected with HIV virus ranging from age 15-49 years. The horizontal axis shows the average income per person (GDP per capita) expressed in dollars per person per year. It’s interesting to see the usage of bubble chart for this, which is primarily used when you represent data that has three or more data series (In this case income, % of HIV infected people and size of the population) and each containing a set of values.
UNDERSTANDING THE DATA:
Let’s dive deeper into the viz by understanding it’s working dynamics. On analyzing we see that each country in the world is a bubble,the size of the bubbles represent how many people are infected in a particular country and color represents regions of the world (see on top right side).We start the HIV epidemic cycle and notice that in year 1985,all the countries had an infected population percentage less than 1% but the income ranges broadly from $400 to nearly $40,000. The United States being the richest country had a very little percentage of people infected but the size of the bubble is significant as compared to rest of the countries suggesting that it had the large section of citizens who were infected with this deadly virus. With 5% infection rate Zambia and Uganda were the highly infected countries but with a lower income.
As years pass by, it’s shocking to notice that only the African countries experience a sky rocketing growth rate (highest being 26%) of HIV infection while it stayed low for the rest of the world. As a result of economic slowdown , Africans themselves had neither the resources nor the money to discover vaccines that prevent AIDS, which acts as a strong warrant to our claim.The backing for this warrant can be read in the form of this article. For the past 3 years we have reached a steady state of HIV epidemic. Steady state doesn’t mean that things are getting better, it has just stopped getting worse. Only 1% of the world adult population those who are infected by HIV fall under this steady state, roughly around 40 million (for comparison it equals California population today).
As our main claim revolves around the African sub-continent, we will focus more on them. Let’s take Botswana as our specimen and analyze it. Having an economy better than it’s counterpart African countries, it started low on infection rate but picked up in 2003 before finally declining slowly. Because of better economy Botswana is able to treat people. Those who are treated don’t die of AIDS rather they survive longer and as a result the % wouldn’t come down. Poor African countries like Somalia have lower infection rate because people can’t afford to expensive medical care and die as a result, infact it’s % figures matches with rest of the world. This fact certainly acts as a rebuttal to our claim that all of Africa acts as an incubator for HIV infected people.
DRAWBACKS:
Undoubtedly the visualization is stunning, but there are few snags which can alter the statistics if taken into consideration. First, the data collected are only with respect to inter-countries. But what it doesn’t include is the scope to look at the differences among the HIV infected population within the regions of a given country which would give insights to it’s degree of severity. Second, here we are only talking about the infected % of adults but their is no comparison with the death/ mortality rate. So there is a high probability when combined together it might give us a different picture altogether.
FROM A CRITIQUE’S VIEWPOINT:
The number of different parameters presented on the interactive dashboard are overwhelming and seems far less from being user-friendly. For a new user it becomes hard and confusing, instead a simple drop down could be introduced to give the audience the flexibility to play around with their desired set of parameters.The simpler it is, the easier it becomes. Also the age group mentioned here ranges from 15-50 years, which fails to segregate the individual age group being infected. The vertical lines on the chart needs to be even spaced. Also, while toggling on the ‘Map’ tab, it gives us an elliptical view of the globe and the bubble of each country fail to sync with their respective geographical location. This can be eliminated by displaying a flat world map view with bubbles corresponding to accurate geographical locations. An additional feature of forecast can be introduced to visualize the future trends and the possible repercussions of this epidemic.
ALTERNATIVE APPROACH/MODIFICATION:
Though it’s visually appealing there are certain hiccups with this bubble charts visualization as well. It can be further enhanced and made simpler by adopting certain techniques.
- The bubble chart earlier gave us an entire range of age groups. So, as an modification I would recommend to use trend lines to show the % of individual age groups infected. This is a simpler alternative to the control group arrangements, as you can see this in below visualization.
2. In this following modification we can see that all the bubbles sync accurately with their geographical points. As a result we can visually identify that a majority of the bubbles are concentrated in Africa.
3. Further, as we discussed in the drawbacks that the visualization doesn’t show the differences within a country, It can be modified by introducing an additional feature in which by selecting a country say Africa, it will give you an overview of all the data values for the 54 states along with an appropriate color contrast. The modified version looks like the below visualization.
CONCLUSION:
We could clearly see that more than 50% of the African population (0.6 billion) are affected by AIDS and by statistical data around 0.25 million Africans have died due to wars. Thus, it strongly affirms the claim made by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan. But at the same time, over simplifying the fact that only African sub-continents are affected by HIV would be a wrong judgement. UNAIDS has provided sufficient data proving that all parts of the world are in the grip of this epidemic virus. So, instead of worrying about the expensive treatments, as a socially responsible person we should focus more on the prevention rather than it’s after effects. As prevention is the only way we can make the world a safer and a better place.
References : Globalissues.org, Discovermagazine.com , Thegaurdians.com, afro.who