Trends in HIV

• Already, more than 30 million people around the world have died of AIDS-related diseases.

• In 2010, 2.7 million people were newly infected with HIV, and 1.8 million men, women

and children died of AIDS-related causes.

• 34 million people around the world are now living with HIV.

• It is in Africa, in some of the poorest countries in the world, that the impact of HIV has

been most severe. At the end of 2009, there were 9 countries in Africa where more than

one tenth of the adult population aged 15-49 was infected with HIV.

• In Botswana, 24.8% of adults are now infected with HIV, while in South Africa, 17.8% are

infected.

• With a total of around 5.6 million infected, South Africa has more people living with HIV

than any other country.

• An estimated 1.9 million people in sub-saharan Africa became newly infected in 2010,

meaning that there are now 22.9 million people living with HIV in this region.

• The total number of people living with HIV in Asia is thought to be nearly 4.8 million.

Around half (2.4 million) of these were in India followed by China (740,000), Thailand

(530,000) and Myanmar (240,000).

• The AIDS epidemic in Eastern Europe & Central Asia is rapidly increasing, with a rise of

around 250 percent in the total number of people living with HIV since 2001.

• In 2010, some 1.5 million people were living with HIV, compared to 410,000 in 2001
 • AIDS claimed an estimated 90,000 lives during 2010, over ten times 2001's figure.

• Outside sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean has the highest HIV prevalence. In the most

affected countries of the Caribbean, the spread of HIV infection is driven by unprotected

sex between men and women, although infections associated with injecting drug use are

common in some places.

• In high-income nations, HIV infections have historically been concentrated principally

among injecting drug users and gay men.

• These groups are still at high risk, but heterosexual intercourse accounts for a growing

proportion of cases.

• In the United States, a quarter of people diagnosed with AIDS in 2008 were female, and

three quarters of these women were infected as a result of heterosexual sex.

• Many high-income countries suffer from the belief that HIV is something that affects other

people, not their own populations.

• On a national level, this belief prevents policy makers and budget setters from seeing the

epidemic on their own doorsteps, looking instead to the situation in areas such as Africa.

• Some high-income countries fund medication provision for low-income countries whilst

failing to provide medicines for their own citizens who have HIV/AIDS. For example,

many people cannot afford HIV treatment in America.

Review questions

• What is the difference between HIV and AIDS?

• Approximately how many people are living with HIV worldwide?

• Can insects transmit HIV?

• Herpes can be transmitted by...

• Which is the most effective at preventing pregnancy, HIV and other sexually transmitted

infections?

• HIV is believed to have evolved from a similar virus found in which animal?

• If someone with HIV has a CD4 count of 350 or less, what does this mean?

• What is the risk of transmitting HIV during oral sex?

• Which country has the highest number of people living with HIV?

• What does the standard HIV test identify?