Assessing the trend of HIV/AIDS mortality rate in Asia and North Africa: an application of latent growth models.

Over the last 30 years, HIV/AIDS has emerged as a major global health challenge. This study evaluates the change of HIV/AIDS mortality rates in Asian and North African countries from 1990 to 2010 using the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study. HIV/AIDS mortality rates were derived from the GBD database from 1990 to 2010, for 52 countries in Asia and North Africa. First, a Latent Growth Model was employed to assess the change in AIDS mortality rate over time in six different regions of Asia, and also the change in AIDS mortality rate over time for males and females in Asia and North Africa. Finally, Latent Growth Mixture Models (LGMMs) were applied to identify distinct groups in which countries within each group have similar trends over time. Our results showed that increase in mortality rate over time for males is about three times greater than for females. The highest and lowest trend of AIDS mortality rates were observed in South-East Asia and high-income Asia-Pacific regions, respectively. The LGMM allocated most countries in the South and South-East region into two classes with the highest trend of AIDS mortality rates. Although the HIV/AIDS mortality rates are decreasing in some countries and clusters, the general trend in the Asian continent is upwards. Therefore, it is necessary to provide programmes to achieve the goal of access to HIV prevention measures, treatment, care, and support for high-risk groups, especially in countries with a higher trend of AIDS mortality rates.