Although recent treatment advances have led to an encouraging downturn in the number of new AIDS cases and AIDS-related deaths in this country, the epidemic continues to accelerate elsewhere in the world. In 1997 alone, approximately 5.8 million people globally were newly infected with HIV, including approximately 590,000 children under age 15.

According to a detailed, country-by-country analysis of HIV prevalence released earlier this year by UNAIDS, approximately 5.8 million people worldwide were newly infected with HIV in 1997 alone. More than 90 percent of these new infections occurred in developing countries, where antiretroviral therapy is beyond the reach of all but the privileged few. Alarmingly, in 27 developing countries, HIV prevalence more than doubled between 1995 and 1997. The prevalence of HIV infection is highest in the African nations of Botswana and Zimbabwe, where more than 25 percent of adults are now HIV-infected.

Globally, one in every 100 adults 15 to 49 years of age is HIV-infected; at least 80 percent of these infections are due to heterosexual transmission. By the end of 1997, an estimated 30.6 million people worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS, including 1.1 million children younger than 15 years of age. Since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, at least 8.2 million children younger than 15 have been orphaned because of the premature deaths of HIV-infected parents.

Current worldwide statistics can be found at the WHO.

Other information sources:

• Intensifying the Global Response to HIV/AIDS - Statement by Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director UNAIDS to the United states House of Representatives International Relations Committee, September 16, 1998



• UNAIDS Report July 1998 - HIV preventive vaccine trials in developing countries



• UNAIDS report October 1998



• The Need for a Vaccine Against HIV-AIDS - Edward Katongole-Mbidde, MBCHB



• World Health Report, 1999