HIV and AIDS around the World

HIV is one of the biggest social, economic and health challenges in the world. It is a global emergency claiming over 8,000 lives every day. In fact 5 people die of AIDS every minute.

HIV and AIDS around the World

• 40.3 million people living with HIV worldwide (2.3 m children)
• 4.9 million people newly infected with HIV in 2005
• 700,000 people currently receive anti-HIV drugs in developing countries
• 90% of people living with HIV are in developing countries
• HIV is increasing fastest in East Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia
• Only 12% of people needing anti-HIV drugs in developing countries receive them
• Anti-HIV drugs cost on average US$300 per person per year
• 3.1 million people died of AIDS in 2005
• 570,000 of those people who died were children.
• Over 25 million total AIDS deaths to date ¹

AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome:
Acquired means you can get infected with it
Immune Deficiency means a weakness in the body's system that fights diseases.
Syndrome means a group of health problems that make up a disease.

AIDS is caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). If one gets infected with HIV, the body will try to fight the infection. It will make "antibodies", special molecules that are supposed to fight HIV. When you get a blood test for HIV, the test looks for these antibodies. If you have them in your blood, it means that you have HIV infection. People who have the HIV antibodies are called "HIV-Positive".

Being HIV-positive, or having HIV disease, is not the same as having AIDS. Many people are HIV-positive but don't get sick for many years. As HIV disease continues, it slowly wears down the immune system.

How does one get AIDS?

One does not actually "get" AIDS. Instead one might get infected with HIV, and later this might develop into AIDS. One can get infected with HIV from anyone who's infected, even if they don't look sick, and even if they haven't tested HIV-positive yet. The blood, vaginal fluid, semen, and breast milk of people infected with HIV has enough of the virus in it to infect other people. Most people get the HIV virus by: a) having sex with an infected person b) sharing a needle with someone who's infected and; c) being born when the mother is infected, or drinking the breast milk of an infected woman. Getting a transfusion of infected blood used to be a way people got AIDS, but now the blood supply is screened very carefully and the risk is extremely low. There are no documented cases of HIV being transmitted by tears or saliva, but it is possible to be infected with HIV through oral sex or in rare cases through deep kissing, especially if you have open sores in your mouth or bleeding gums ².

The male latex condom is the most efficient available technology to reduce the sexual transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (UNAIDS/UNFPA/WHO, 2004).

For more information on HIV / AIDS

• UNAIDS: The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS
  
• The Global Fund
  
• The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation
  
• aids.org
  
• World AIDS Day
• Study Guides at Metro Magazine

Footnotes

1. All international statistics are from UNAIDS, 2005 last updated: November 2005 ↑
2. http://www.aids.org/factSheets/index.html ↑