AIDS Pandemic

AIDS Pandemic

HIV/AIDS is a global pandemic. As of 2010 approximately 34 million people have HIV worldwide. Of these, approximately 16.8 million are women and 3.4 million are less than 15 years old. There were about 1.8 million deaths from AIDS in 2010, down from 3.1 million in 2001.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the region most affected. In 2010, an estimated 68% (22.9 million) of all HIV cases and 66% of all deaths (1.2 million) occurred in this region. This means that about 5% of the adult populations is infected. Here in contrast to other regions women compose nearly 60% of cases. South Africa has the largest population of people with HIV of any country in the world at 5.9 million.

South & South East Asia (a region with about 2 billion people as of 2010, over 30% of the global population) has an estimated 4 million cases (12% of all people living with HIV), with about 250,000 deaths in 2010. Approximately 2.5 million of these cases are in India, where however the prevalence is only about 0.3% (somewhat higher than that found in Western and Central Europe or Canada). Prevalence is lowest in East Asia at 0.1%.

In 2008 approximately 1.2 million people in the United States had HIV; 20% did not realize that they were infected. It resulted in about 17,500 deaths. In the United Kingdom, as of 2009, there were approximately 86,500 cases and 516 deaths. In Canada as of 2008 there where about 65,000 cases and 53 deaths.

Since AIDS was first recognized in 1981 and 2009 it has led to nearly 30 million deaths.