Fact Sheets on HIV/AIDS
(Researched by OMI-JPIC, Rome)
Ø As of December 2002, an estimated 42 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. These include 3.2 million children under fifteen years of age and 19.2 million women.
Ø A total of 5 million people are thought to have been newly infected with HIV during 2002, 800,000 of whom were children aged under 15 years. 2 million of the 4.2 million adults infected were women.
Ø The total number of AIDS deaths in 2002 was 3.1 million. 2.5 million adults died of AIDS in 2002 and almost half (1.2 million) were women. 610,000 children under the age of 15 died of AIDS in 2002.
Ø About 14,000 new HIV infections occurred every day in 2002. 95% of them were in the developing world. 2,000 infections occurred in children under 15 years of age. Of the 12,000 new infections occurring each day in people aged 15-49, 50% are in women and 50% are in people aged 15-24.
Ø Since the beginning of the epidemic, more than 21 million people have died of AIDS.
Some people may still think that AIDS is mainly an African problem. Or that it affects only certain people, outside the mainstream of life. That is a deadly mistake, UN Secretary Kofi Annan describes HIV/AIDS as the most globalized epidemic humanity has ever known, He said that the wider availability of effective treatment should not lead to complacency but instead go hand in hand with more effective prevention.
UNAIDS report highlights the fact that in the past five years HIV/AIDS has grown faster in Eastern Europe and Central Asia than any other part of the world, rising from 30,000 infections in 1998 to the current figure of 1.5 million.
Not only has the disease attacked new parts of the world. It is also constantly making inroads into new communities. (OMI-JPIC, Rome)