The Next Wave of HIV/AIDS: Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, India, and China

This Intelligence Community Assessment ICA highlights the rising HIVAIDS problem through 2010 in five countries of strategic importance to the United States that have large populations at risk for HIV infection Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, India, and China. The paper does not attempt to make aggregate projections about global trends. The five countries were selected because they are among the worlds most populous countries, together representing over 40 percent of the world population in the early-to-mid-stages of an HIVAIDS epidemic and led by governments that have not yet given the issue the sustained high priority that has been key to stemming the tide of the disease in other countries. This paper builds on the December 1999 unclassified National Intelligence Estimate, The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States, which focused on the spread of AIDS in the context of other growing infectious diseases. Excerpts from the 1999 Estimate presage the expansion of the HIVAIDS epidemic beyond the geographic focal point of southern Africa. The National Intelligence Council NIC convened a conference of U.S. Government officials and outside experts to share their current assessments and expectations for the future of the disease in these five countries. Given the range of estimates of the current numbers of infected people and the lack of consensus on which infectious disease models calculate future rates most accurately, the future projections in this paper represent consensus estimates by experts. The NIC, in addition to coordinating the draft within the Intelligence Community, had the paper reviewed by several leading experts from outside the Intelligence Community as part of its effort to seek out expertise from inside and outside the government.