Doing research on HIV/AIDS?
Click here for the latest data from UNAIDS

AIDS is spreading. AIDS is frightening. AIDS is a global epidemic. These statistics put things into perspective.

• As of the end of 2002, an estimated 42 million people worldwide – 38.6 million adults and 3.2 million children younger than 15 years – were living with HIV/AIDS. Approximately 70 percent of these people (29.4 million) live in Sub-Saharan Africa; another 17 percent (7.2 million) live in Asia.
  
  
• Worldwide, approximately twelve of every 1000 adults aged 15 to 49 are HIV-infected. In Sub-Saharan Africa, about 9 percent of all adults in this age group are HIV-infected. In 4 African countries, the prevalence of HIV infection among adults aged 15 to 49 exceeds 30 percent.
  
  
• The number of people in the world infected by AIDS will double to nearly 90 million by 2010.
  
  
• Approximately 50 percent of adults living with HIV/AIDS worldwide are women.
  
  
• An estimated 5 million new HIV infections occurred worldwide during 2002; that is, about 14,000 infections each day. More than 95 percent of these new infections occurred in developing countries.
  
  
• In 2002, approximately 2,000 children under the age of 15 years, and 6,000 young people aged 15 to 24 years became infected with HIV every day.
  
  
• In 2002 alone, HIV/AIDS-associated illnesses caused the deaths of approximately 3.1 million people worldwide, including an estimated 610,000 children younger than 15 years.

Statistics are courtesy of www.niaid.nih.gov and www.unaids.org