Numbers put us in the know. We saw that with COVID-19, and now again, with Rwanda snuffing out the Marburg virus outbreak in about a month.

Why?

Because keeping accurate track of epidemiological data — how many people are infected, get treated, recover or die, and where and when all of this happens when a disease breaks out — allows health authorities not only to see how an epidemic unfolds but also to make evidence-based decisions to change its course. 

Rewind to South Africa close to 25 years before, where in 2001, little data was available on HIV prevalence in the country. 

Instead of concrete counts and scientific facts driving authorities’ decisions on how to tackle HIV, the then president and health minister denied that the virus causes Aids — and with it denied scores of people treatment, which experts estimate could have saved 330 000 lives between 2001 and 2005. 

But the Human Sciences Research Council’s (HSRC) first national survey in 2002, in which blood samples were collected from 10 000 people in households across South Africa, was “a turning point”, says Salim Abdool Karim, director of the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa (Caprisa), in a video about the survey’s history. “At a time when [the] country had a high level of denial — or more appropriately, denial at high levels — this survey began to make HIV real.” 

Read the full piece by Linda Pretorius and Jacques Verryn at Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism.

Read more about SABSSM and access all the historical reports and latest documents here.

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