Notwithstanding the obvious importance of forecasting
the HIV-infection spread, the incidence of AIDS and their aftermath in
Russia, a few forecasts of this kind have been made till now, among them:
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The International Labor Organization forecast that
had not yet been completed by the time the present report was finalized.
The consultations with the ILO experts dealing with the task revealed that
the results they had then obtained were similar to ours.
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The Imperial College’s forecast whose authors suggested
rather an approach to making such a forecast than the result of the forecast
itself. The micro-simulation model they had designed showed in half of
the runs HIV prevalence exceeds a half of the adult population within 10
years after virus infiltration.
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The forecast by the US National Intelligence Council
under the CIA Director;
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The forecast by the US Center for Strategic and International
Studies;
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The forecast by N. Eberstadt.
The objective of the present research was to suggest
our own forecast of both the HIV epidemic in Russia and its possible demographic
impact. In order to do this, we have projected various scenarios of further
developments.
An average version of the population projection
made by the Center for Demography and Human Ecology (CDHE), taking no account
of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, was adopted as a baseline scenario.
Afterwards, we made several assumptions about a
possible epidemic dynamic and then the population projection were calculated,
taking HIV/AIDS into account. A comparison of the projected populations
has helped to identify and assess the impact of the HIV epidemic on population
dynamics. Thus, the substance of such an approach consists in comparisons
of demographic indicators whether there is epidemic or not.
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