
|  |  | Health & Beauty | July 2008  
Global AIDS Pandemic: UN Factfile
Agence France-Presse go to original
 Paris - Following is a snapshot of the global AIDS pandemic, based on a report issued on Tuesday by UNAIDS.
 The document was published ahead of the August 3-8 International AIDS Conference, taking place in Mexico City.
 • TOTAL: Around 33 million people, in a range of 30.3 to 36.1 million, were living with HIV in 2007. Around two million are children.
 • DEATHS: Some two million people, in a range of 1.8 to 2.3 million, died of AIDS-related causes last year. In 2005, the death toll was around 2.2 million.
 • NEW INFECTIONS: The AIDS virus infected 2.7 million people in 2007, or nearly 7,500 people per day.
 • CHILDREN: Around 370,000 of the new infections occurred among children under the age of 15. The annual tally has progressively fallen since 2001, thanks to drugs that prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus.
 • LEVELLING OFF: Because of demographic rise, the epidemic has now stabilized in terms of prevalence, reaching a plateau of around 0.8 percent of the world's population. But this is because of demographic growth. In terms of raw numbers, the tally of infections is still edging up.
 • VARIATIONS: New infections fell in several countries, including Botswana and Mozambique, but this success was offset by increases in other countries, including China, Indonesia, Kenya and Russia.
 • AFRICAN FOCUS: Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 67 percent of all people living with HIV worldwide. More than 12 million African children have lost one or both parents to AIDS.
 • DRUG LIFELINE: Antiretrovirals are now saving lives in significant numbers. Three million people now receive these HIV-suppressing drugs in poor countries, although this is still only 31 percent of the total who need them.
 • MONEY: Ten billion dollars was spent on fighting HIV/AIDS in poor countries in 2007, but was still more than eight billion dollars short of what was needed. Funding will have to increase by 50 percent by 2010 to maintain the current increase in drug access.
 Source: 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic |

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