The Epidemic Facing the World

AIDS is the fastest growing medical crisis facing the world. By June 2003 more than 21 million people had died of AIDS.

As of December 2002, it is estimated that 42 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. These figures include 3.2 million children under the age of 15. In 2002 about 5 million people are thought to have been newly infected with HIV – and since then the rate of infections has increased.

Despite improvements in AIDS treatments there remains no cure. AIDS is a terminal disease. The United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS ("UNAIDS") warns that there could be 68 million HIV-related deaths between 2000 and 2020 unless prevention and treatment programmes to combat the disease are expanded drastically.

Africa
In some parts of the world the level of HIV infections has now exceeded anything the world medical community imagined possible in the early 1990’s. Rampant epidemics are underway in sub-Saharan Africa where national HIV prevalence exceeds 30% in some parts - Botswana (38.8%), Lesotho (31%), Swaziland (33.4%) and Zimbabwe (33.7%).

In the Republic of South Africa alone 4.2 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. UNAIDS is projecting that 50% of South African new mothers could die because of HIV, and that mortality amongst 15-34 year olds could be 17 times higher as a result of AIDS. Some statisticians expect average life expectancy in South Africa to have reduced to a mere 30 years by 2010.
"As of December 2002, an estimated 42 million people are living with HIV/AIDS"
AIDS epidemic update, UNAIDS, December 2002

World-Wide
it is not just in sub-Saharan Africa that the growth of HIV infections is demonstrated in terrifying figures. HIV infections are rapidly spreading in other parts of the world, in particular, China, the Far East and eastern Europe. UNAIDS warns that, although 42 million people are currently infected with HIV worldwide, the HIV epidemic is still in its early phase.

UNAIDS highlight a 70% increase in new HIV infections in China in the first 6 months of 2001. In India 3.97 million people were living with HIV infection in December 2001, yet “forecasts of millions more infections [in India] seem horribly plausible”. (The Economist, 2004).