Facts and Figures

· Since the pandemic began, a total of 47 million people have contracted HIV, and 14 million have died of AIDS. Today there are more than 33 million people living with the virus worldwide.

· In 1998 alone there were nearly 6 million new infections.

· Every minute of every day, around 11 people become newly infected with HIV.

· Globally, one in ten of those who became newly infected during 1998 was a child under the age of 15 years. The vast majority were in sub-Saharan Africa, while some were infected through blood or sexual abuse, and most are believed to have acquired the virus from their mothers.

· Today about half of all new infections past infancy are in young people below the age of 25 years, very many of them still teenagers.

· By the end of 1998 a cumulative total of 18.5 million women had been infected with HIV worldwide, and nearly five million women had died of AIDS.

· 90% of infected women currently live in developing countries.

· However, the risk is increasing for women everywhere - in developed and developing countries alike. In France, women’s share of reported AIDS cases increased from 12% in 1985 to 20% ten years later. In Spain female AIDS cases rose from 7% to 19% of all AIDS cases during the same period. And in Brazil the proportion rose from just 1% in 1984 to 25% ten years later.

· Recent surveys from India indicate that HIV is no longer concentrated in certain high risk groups, such as urban sex workers and their clients, and drug injectors, but now has a firm foothold in the general population. More than 1% of pregnant women in some cities are now HIV-positive.

· In African countries worst affected by the epidemic, AIDS accounts up to 70% of deaths of women aged 20-44 years.

· AIDS may already have doubled the mortality rate in children under 5 in regions most affected by the virus.

· In African countries with an adult HIV prevalence of 10% or more, life expectancy is projected to drop by about 17 years for generations born early in the next century.

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