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Claim: Nigeria has the second-highest number of people living with HIV.

Verdict: Misleading. The report referenced by the claimant is from a 2018 report by UNICEF based on 2015 data, which is not the best representation of the current state of HIV in Nigeria. The report also speaks to the burden of HIV, not the number of people living with HIV, as asserted by the claimant. The most recent data showed that in Africa, Nigeria has the third-highest number of people living with HIV, with the figure at 1.7 million as of 2023.
Full Text
The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) continues to be a significant global public health issue, having claimed 42.3 million lives so far.
Since 2003, the United States (US) government has invested over $100 billion in the global HIV/AIDS response, saving over 25 million lives through its President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
On Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025, Donald Trump stopped the disbursement of funds through PEPFAR for at least 90 days. This move affects Nigeria and other developing countries that have been beneficiaries of this relief programme.
Reacting to this development, Nigerian Doctor and influencer Chinonso Egemba, popularly known as Aproko Doctor, claimed Nigeria has the second-highest number of people living with HIV and we depend on a lot of donations.
“…Nigeria has the world’s second highest number of people living with HIV,” part of his tweet reads.
Some X users, however, did not agree with his statistics, stating Nigeria does not have the second-highest number of people living with HIV.
X user Samuel Bika (@BikaSamuel) wrote,
“The table you’re showing is for prevalence. Nigeria is third on the number of people living with HIV, only behind S. Africa and Mozambique.”
Another user (@swagbito) wrote, “Nigeria is not the world’s second highest number of people living with HIV. Please, stop misinforming people.”
In response to these comments, Mr Egemba shared a screenshot of his source, which showed a UNICEF report.
Part of the screenshot read, “Nigeria has 190,950 HIV/AIDS infections per year, the second highest rate in the world.”
The topic’s significance, the varying opinions raised and the need to set the records straight prompted DUBAWA’s investigation.
Verification
Seeing the claimant (Aproko Doctor) had provided the source of his data, we first looked at the UNICEF report. This report noted that Nigeria has the second highest burden of HIV/AIDs, with an estimated three million people living with HIV and 190,950 new infections recorded in 2015.
“Nigeria has the world’s second highest burden of HIV/AIDS, with an estimated three million people living with HIV (PLHIV) and 190,950 new infections recorded in 2015,” part of the report reads.
We observed that this UNICEF report speaks to the burden of HIV, not the highest number of people living with HIV, and it is from 2015 data. So, we went on to conduct keyword searches to find UNICEF’s current data on people living with HIV but did not find specific reports or data sets that speak to this. Available reports from UNICEF include HIV Statistics- Global and Regional Trends, HIV estimates for children dashboard, and Adolescent HIV prevention.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), as of 2023, there are a total of 39.9 million people living with HIV globally, with 38.6 million of this number being adults (15 years above). Of these 38.6 million adults, 20.5 million are women, while 18.1 million are men. This data set by WHO did not break down the figures by country.
Data from Development Aid agrees with WHO global figures but goes a step ahead to break them down into regions. For Africa, 20.8 million people in Eastern and Southern Africa live with HIV, 210,000 people in the Middle East and North Africa live with HIV, and 5.1 million people live with HIV in West and Central Africa.
We also found data from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on the AIDS adult prevalence rate, which put Eswatini at number one and Lesotho at number two as of 2021. CIA noted that their data on the adult prevalence rate compares the percentage of adults (aged 15-49) living with HIV/AIDS.
Statista 2023 data on people living with HIV in African countries sourced from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) ranked South Africa as the country with the highest number of people living with HIV with 7.7 million people, followed by Mozambique with 2.4 million and then Nigeria as number three with 1.7 million.
Seeing there are varying data on HIV prevalence rate, HIV burden and the rate of people living with HIV, we needed to clarify the basis of these terms or means of measurement. So we looked them up.
According to the Centre for Disease Control (CDC), the prevalence rate is the number of cases of a disease, the number of infected people, or the number of people with some other attribute present during a particular period.
The National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases explains the burden of disease as the hardships and losses associated with disease, disability, and death. Many measures of disease burden concentrate on the factors that cause or worsen an illness. These factors include the number of cases, mortality, morbidity, disability, financial cost, risk attribution, and trends.
In this case, the burden of HIV comprises several factors, not just the number of people living with the disease. So, using the data for the burden of disease for the number of people living with HIV is not accurate.
Conclusion
Our findings reveal that in Africa, Nigeria has the third-highest number of people living with HIV, with the figure at 1.7 million as of 2023. The report referenced by the claimant to back his “Nigeria has the second highest number of people with HIV” claim speaks to the burden of HIV, which encompasses several factors, not just the number of people living with HIV. The said report released in 2018 referencing 2015 data is not the best representation of the current state of HIV in Nigeria.