AIDS: SURVIVAL ANALYSIS OF PERSONS TESTING HIV +

The purpose of this paper is to provide a survival analysis of persons in the various stages of HIV infection typically leading to AIDS and ultimately death. The model used is a continuous time Markov process with a constant intensity for each stage. It is shown that this model adequately describes the data which originated from a German longitudinal study. The data were previously analyzed using less formal methods in the comprehensive paper of Cowell and Hoskins dealing with the effect of HIV infection on life insurance. This paper should be of special interest to health insurers since it deals with distribution of~duration in each stage of progression of the disease.