Latest global HIV/AIDS figures

January 9, 2012

Some important data from a report by the United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS). (Source: Reuters)

An estimated 34 million people worldwide had the human immunodeficiency virus HIV.L that causes AIDS in 2010, according to the UNAIDS data, up 17 percent on 2001, when 28.6 million were living with HIV.
There were 2.7 million new HIV infections in 2010, including an estimated 390,000 among children.
The proportion of women with HIV remained stable in 2010 at 50 percent of all those with the virus, but in sub-Saharan Africa, women account for 59 percent of people living with HIV.
An estimated 1.8 million people died of AIDS-related causes in 2010.

AFRICA:

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region hardest hit by HIV, with 22.9 million HIV-positive people in 2010, about 68 percent of the global total.
The number of new HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa has dropped by more than 26 percent, to 1.9 million in 2010, down from an estimated 2.6 million in 1997.
South Africa has more people with HIV than any other country in the world, an estimated 5.6 million cases.
There were 1.2 million AIDS-related deaths in sub-Saharan Africa in 2010.
AIDS has killed at least a million people each year in the region since 1998.

ASIA:

Although rates of HIV are lower in Asia than in some other regions, the size of the Asian population means it has the second largest group of people living with HIV.
There are 4 million people living with HIV in South and South East Asia, and there were 270,000 new infections in the region and 250,000 AIDS-related deaths in 2010,
Since the epidemic’s peak in 1996, there has been a 40 percent decline in new HIV infections in this region.
In East Asia, 790,000 people have HIV. There were 56,000 AIDS-related deaths in 2010. In this region, there has been an increase in new HIV infections to 88,000 in 2010 from 74,000 in 2001.

EASTERN EUROPE & CENTRAL ASIA:

Since 2001, the number of people living with HIV in this region has increased to 1.5 million in 2010 from 410,000 in 2001.
Russia and Ukraine account for nearly 90 percent of the regional epidemic.
In 2010, an estimated 90,000 adults and children died of AIDS, up from 7,800 in 2001. Injecting drug use remains the leading cause of HIV infection in this region.

MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

There are 470,000 adults and children with HIV in 2010 in this region, up from 320,000 in 2001. New infections also rose to 59,000 in 2010 from 43,000 in 2001, and deaths from AIDS increased to 35,000 in 2010 from 22,000 in 2001.