|
IRIN
HIV-AIDS WebSpecial : GLOBAL CRISIS GLOBAL ACTION
| FACT SHEET: |
Latest Statistics from UNAIDS |
|
Since the first clinical evidence of AIDS was reported
two decades ago, HIV/AIDS has spread to every corner
of the world. Still rapidly growing, the epidemic is
reversing development gains, robbing millions of their
lives, widening the gap between rich and poor, and undermining
social and economic security.
|
|
An estimated 36.1 million people are living with HIV.
In 2000, about 5.3 million people around the world became
infected, 600,000 of them children.
|
|
|
Since the epidemic began, AIDS has killed a total of 21.8
million people - almost three times the population of Switzerland.
In 2000 alone, AIDS claimed three million lives.
|
| Sub-Saharan Africa |
 |
|
|
Sub-Saharan Africa is by far the worst affected region
in the world. An estimated 25.3 million Africans were
living with HIV at the end of 2000. By that time, a
further 17 million had already died of AIDS - over three
times the number of AIDS deaths in the rest of the world.
|
|
|
On the continent, two million more women than men carry
HIV. Some 12.1 million children have lost their mother
or both parents to the epidemic. By the end of 2000,
an estimated 1.1 million children under 15 were living
with HIV, largely due to mother-to-child transmission.
|
|
Uganda remains the only African country to have turned
a major epidemic around. Its extraordinary effort of
national mobilisation pushed the adult HIV prevalence
rate down from around 14 percent in the early 1990s
to 8 percent in 2000. Elsewhere in East Africa - Djibouti,
Ethiopia and Kenya, for example - prevalence rates are
still in double digits. In West Africa, Senegal has
managed to slow transmission, but prevalence in populous
Nigeria now stands at 5 percent.
|
|
In
several southern Africa countries, at least one in five
adults is HIV-positive. Adult prevalence rates rise
as high as 20 percent in Namibia and Zambia, 24 percent
in Lesotho, 25 percent in Swaziland and Zimbabwe, and
almost 36 percent in Botswana.
|
|
Countries
such as Botswana and South Africa have redoubled their
efforts to contain the epidemic, but it will take years
for this to bear fruit. In 2000, the HIV prevalence
rate among pregnant women in South Africa rose to its
highest level ever: 24.5 percent, bringing to 4.7 million
the estimated total number of South Africans living
with the virus.
|
| Latin America and the Caribbean |
|
|
|
Almost
1.8 million people in this region are living with HIV/AIDS,
including the 210,000 adults and children who became
infected in 2000. At 5 percent, Haiti has the highest
HIV adult prevalence rate in the world outside sub-Saharan
Africa. The rate in five other Caribbean countries hovers
around 2 percent of the adult population. However, Brazil's
emphatic efforts seem to be containing a potentially
major heterosexual epidemic in that country.
|
|
The
spread of HIV is driven by a combination of factors,
including unsafe sex between men and women (the main
mode of transmission in the Caribbean and much of Central
America). In Brazil, Costa Rica and Mexico, infection
rates peak among men who have sex with men, while in
Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, injecting drug users
account for a large share of infections. Throughout
the region, however, heterosexual transmission is becoming
an increasingly important factor in the epidemic.
|
| Asia and the Middle East |
|
|
|
Some
6.4 million people in Asia carry the virus and determined
steps are needed to prevent a massive increase in their
numbers. China seems especially prone to an epidemic
because of the recent steep rise in sexually transmitted
infections and the large-scale transmigration of people
(spurred by economic growth).
|
|
|
An
estimated 780,000 people became infected in South and
South-East Asia in 2000, with HIV prevalence exceeding
1 percent in Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand. Because
of India's vast population, its low prevalence rate
(0.7 percent) nonetheless translates into 3.7 million
people living with HIV/AIDS-more than in any other country
besides South Africa.
|
|
|
In
North Africa and the Middle East, infections are rising
from a low base. Across the region, there were an estimated
80,000 new infections in 2000, bringing to some 400,000
the number of people living with HIV/AIDS. Localised
studies in Algeria, for instance, reveal prevalence
rates of about 1 percent among pregnant women.
|
| Central and Eastern Europe |
|
|
|
Infection
rates are climbing alarmingly in Eastern Europe and
Central Asia, where overlapping epidemics of HIV,
injecting drug use and sexually transmitted infections
are swelling the ranks of people living with HIV/AIDS.
Most of the quarter million people who became infected
in 2000 were men. In some parts of the region, more
HIV infections occurred in 2000 than in all previous
years combined.
|
|
|
New
epidemics have emerged in Estonia and Uzbekistan,
while, in Ukraine, more than 250 000 people were living
with HIV/AIDS by 2000. In 1986, only a few cities
in the Russian Federation reported HIV cases; today,
almost all its regions harbour the virus. Although
the epidemic is still concentrated among injecting
drug users and their sexual partners, growing prostitution
and high levels of sexually transmitted infections
could, in a climate of jolting social change, cause
it to spread rapidly into the general population.
Industrialized countries.
|
|
|
The
notion that the epidemic is a thing of the past in
high-income industrialized countries is unfounded.
Almost 1.5 million people live with HIV in those regions,
many of them productively, thanks to pervasive antiretroviral
therapy. But that achievement is overshadowed by the
fact that prevention efforts are stalling in most
industrialized countries.
|
|
|
Infection
rates in some American cities are again rising among
men who have sex with men; one urban United States
study has revealed an HIV prevalence of 7.2% in this
group. Also reported are sharp increases in sexually
transmitted infections among men who have sex with
men in Amsterdam-an indication that unsafe sex threatens
to become the norm again. There are signs that unsafe
sex between men might be a growing factor in Eastern
Europe's epidemic.
|
|
|
In
some countries, the epidemic is shifting towards more
vulnerable people-especially ethnic minorities who,
because they face discrimination and social exclusion,
appear to face disproportionate risks of infection.
They are also more likely to be missed by prevention
campaigns and deprived of access to treatment. HIV
prevalence rates among injecting drug users give special
cause for alarm: 18 percent in Chicago and as high
as 30 percent in parts of New York. By contrast, needle
and syringe exchange schemes in Australia are slowing
the increase in prevalence among injecting drug users.
|
|
 |
The
above information supplied by UNAIDS
|
 |
|
In this section:
Quick
links:
|
|
Feedback:
IRIN
welcomes constructive comments and will post a representative
selection of readers views, but reserves the right to
destroy material which is abusive and inflammatory.
Please restrict the length of your reply to one page.
Reply
to any of these comments, or send IRIN feedback.
|
|
