How many countries suppress disease statistics?

We're now well into the second month of a very effective flu-news blackout from Indonesia. But that country may not be the only one that suppresses unwelcome health news.

Via The New York Times: New Study Raises Estimate of H.I.V. Infections in U.S. Excerpt:

he AIDS epidemic in the United States is about 40 percent worse than the government has reported, a new study released here on Saturday shows.

The conclusion is based on the study’s use of a new laboratory test to directly measure the annual incidence of new infections with H.I.V., the AIDS virus, in the United States.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted the study, which found that 56,300 people became H.I.V.-infected in 2006, compared with the 40,000 figure the agency has long cited as the annual incidence of the disease.

A separate historical trend analysis published as part of the study suggests that the number of new infections probably was never as low as the earlier estimate of 40,000 and that it has been roughly stable overall since the late 1990’s.

Officials at the disease centers said the revised figure did not necessarily represent an actual increase in the number of new infections but reflected an ability to more precisely measure H.I.V. incidence and secure a better understanding of the epidemic.

Dr. Philip Alcabes, an epidemiologist at Hunter College in Manhattan, said in a statement that if the C.D.C. findings about the new test were valid, the agency had undercounted new H.I.V. infections by about 15,000 per year for about 15 years.

“Therefore,” Dr. Alcabes said, “there are roughly 225,000 more people living with H.I.V. in the United States than previously suspected. The previous estimate was 1 million to 1.1 million.”