The news today is full of the shocking claim that half of new HIV cases in Greece were from people deliberately contracting the disease in order to claim benefits:
This fact came from a report published by the World Health Organisation, the UN's public health arm.
The full report, prepared by a team from University College London, can be found here. The claim about Greek HIV is on page 112.
Except it's not true. The WHO's head of public relations tweeted that it was actually a "typo".
Typo in @WHO report. People r not giving themselves #HIV in #Greece to get benefits. @WHO Statement out soon. @giorgosroi @zoemavroudi
Gregory Härtl
@HaertlG
Typo in @WHO report. People r not giving themselves #HIV in #Greece to get benefits. @WHO Statement out soon. @giorgosroi @zoemavroudi
The statement doesn't specify exactly how the "editing error" happened, though.
The WHO say the claim was originally sourced to a reference to "accounts of deliberate self-infection by a few individuals", in this correspondence published by The Lancet. That in turn references this report, which describes self-infection as a "well-founded suspicion" about "some problem users".
(HIV infections in Greece dramatically increased beginning in late 2010 - there was a 52% rise in new infections between 2010 and 2011, from 605 new cases to an estimated 922.)
So a "suspicion" about "a few individuals" somehow got turned into a fact about "half of new HIV infections". Good thing it didn't spread far and wide before they... oh.
