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| PSA Campaign Highlights Growing Pandemic |
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| March 8, 2002 - More than two decades after the first cases of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome were reported, AIDS is the deadliest infectious disease among adults, and the fourth leading cause of death worldwide. The epidemic will soon pass bubonic plague, or the "Black Death," as the most lethal infectious disease in human history. Despite considerable progress in our understanding of the human immunodefiency virus (HIV) and how it causes AIDS, there is still no cure and no vaccine. Following is a statistical overview of the global epidemic based on information provided by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). HIV/AIDS Worldwide At least 40 million people are now living with HIV/AIDS, nearly one-third of them young people between the ages of 15 and 24. Women account for half of all adults living with HIV/AIDS.
Five million men, women, and children were newly infected with HIV during 2001—nearly 14,000 people every day. Most of these people do not know they are infected with HIV.
Eastern Europe and Central Asia, especially the Russian Federation, continue to experience the fastest-growing epidemic in the world, with an estimated 250,000 new infections in 2001 alone.
Some 95 percent of people with HIV/AIDS live in the developing world, where basic treatment, much less complex antiretroviral therapy, remains largely inaccessible.
Roughly 70 percent of those with HIV/AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa, where women now account for over 57 percent of all HIV-infected adults.
Approximately 2,000 infants are born HIV-infected each day, and the AIDS epidemic has orphaned 14 million children under the age of 15.
More than 20 million people worldwide have died of AIDS since the first clinical evidence of HIV/AIDS was reported in 1981.
Without a massive investment in global prevention efforts, more than 65 million people could die of AIDS in the next 20 years.
In the United States and other developed countries, the advent of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in the mid-1990s sharply reduced both AIDS cases and AIDS deaths. But with infection rates remaining constant, the number of Americans living with HIV/AIDS continues to increase, and more and more people now carry strains of the virus that have become resistant to current medications. At the same time, the decline in AIDS-related mortality has stabilized, and some regions are reporting an increase in AIDS deaths, as well as the number of people progressing from HIV infection to AIDS.Following is a statistical overview of the epidemic based on information provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). HIV/AIDS in the U.S.
There are between 850,000 and 950,000 Americans now living with HIV—nearly one in every 300 people. Roughly one-third of these people do not know they are infected with HIV.
An estimated 40,000 Americans are newly infected with HIV each year, nearly half of them under the age of 25.
Approximately two young people between the ages of 15 and 24 are newly infected with HIV every hour.
Men who have sex with men (MSM) account for most new HIV infections (42%) in the U.S., and younger MSM and MSM of color are at particularly high risk.
The proportion of AIDS cases among women increased from 7 percent in 1986 to 25 percent in 2001. Over 80 percent of U.S. women diagnosed with HIV are African American or Latina.
Injection drug use accounts directly or indirectly for one-third of all AIDS cases and as many as half of new HIV infections nationwide.
Over 457,000 Americans have died of AIDS since the start of the epidemic.
See the sidebar for links to the latest CDC and UNAIDS reports, as well as a series of special reports on the global impact of HIV/AIDS.
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