HIV infection and AIDS, now a global pandemic, with cases reported from virtually every country. According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), at the end of 2007, 33.2 million individuals (range: 30.6–36.1 million) were living with HIV infection. Of these about 50% are females and 2.5 million are children below 15 years of age. More than 95% of people living with HIV/AIDS reside in low and middle income countries.
In 2007, there were an estimated 2.5 million new cases of HIV infection including 420,000 in children below15 years worldwide and global AIDS deaths totaled 2.1 million, including 330,000 children below 15 years. HIV incidence likely peaked in the late 1990s at more than 3 million new infections per year according to UNAIDS and it has leveled from 2001. Reductions in global HIV incidence likely reflect natural trends in the pandemic and as results of prevention programs resulting in behavior change.
The HIV epidemic has occurred in “waves” in different regions of the world. More than two thirds of all people with HIV infection (approximately 22.5 million) live in that region, but sub-Saharan Africa is home to just 10–11% of the world’s population. Southern Africa is worst-affected. Seroprevalence data indicate that more than 15% of the adult population aged 15 to 49 is HIV infected. Among high-risk individuals like commercial sex workers, patients attending STD clinics, who live in urban areas of sub-Saharan Africa, seroprevalence is now more than 50%. AIDS epidemic was first seen in USA and shortly thereafter in Western Europe.
About 4.9 million people are living with HIV at the end of 2007 in Asia. HIV prevalence is highest in Southeast Asia. The populations of many Asian nations are so large like India and China, that even low national HIV prevalence rates result in large numbers of people living with HIV. HIV prevalence has declined in Myanmar, Cambodia and in Thailand; but, HIV prevalence continues to increase in other countries like Indonesia and Vietnam.
Approximately 2.1 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in North America and in Western and Central Europe. Approximately 1.1 million individuals in the United States are living with HIV infection, one fourth of them are unaware of their infection. HIV seroprevalence rate among adults aged 15–49 years in the United States is about 0.6%. As of January1, 2006, an estimated 984,155 cases of AIDS had been diagnosed in the United States and dependent areas, and 550,394 AIDS related deaths had occurred.
About 1.8 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean. Brazil has the largest HIV/AIDS cases. The Caribbean region has the highest regional adult seroprevalence rate in the world after Africa.
In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, about 1.6 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2007. Ninety percent of new HIV infections reported in 2007 occurred in the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Driven initially by injection drug use and increasingly by heterosexual transmission, the number of new infections in this region has increasing over the past decade.
Unquestionably the major mode of HIV transmission worldwide is heterosexual sex. This is particularly true in developing countries, where the numbers of infected men and women are approximately equal. But in USA and other industrialized nations it is homosexual sex. In most developed countries, including the United States, there has been a gradual shift toward heterosexual transmission.
Posted by vanmathi on September 6, 2011 at 4:40 am
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