Fact Sheet: UNAIDS, WHO Release HIV/AIDS Epidemic Update

28 November 2001

Fact Sheet: UNAIDS, WHO Release HIV/AIDS Epidemic Update

Report finds 40 million cases of HIV worldwide

The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) issued "AIDS Epidemic Update 2001" November 28. This global overview of the status of the HIV/AIDS epidemic is issued annually in conjunction with World AIDS Day December 1.

The report estimates there are 40 million cases of infection worldwide, with 3 million deaths occurring in 2001.

The report is available in full at http://www.unaids.org/epidemic_update\report_dec01\index.html

Materials from the UNAIDS press kit accompanying "AIDS Epidemic Update 2001" are available in French, Russian and Spanish at http://www.unaids.org/worldaidsday\2001\index.html

Following is the text of the fact sheet:

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JOINT UNITED NATIONS PROGRAM ON HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO)

AN OVERVIEW OF THE HIV/AIDS EPIDEMIC 2001

Since the first clinical evidence of AIDS was reported two decades ago, HIV/AIDS has spread to every corner of the world. Still rapidly growing, the epidemic is reversing development gains, robbing millions of their lives, widening the gap between rich and poor, and undermining social and economic security.

--An estimated 40 million people are living with HIV. In 2001, about five million people around the world became infected.

--HIV/AIDS is now the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa. Worldwide, it is the fourth-biggest killer. In 2001 alone, AIDS claimed three million lives.

--About one-third of the people currently living with HIV/AIDS are aged 15-24. Most of them do not know they carry the virus. Many millions more know nothing or too little about HIV to protect themselves against it.

Sub-Saharan Africa

--Sub-Saharan Africa is by far the worst affected region in the world. The estimated 3.4 million new HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa in 2001 mean that 28.1 million Africans now live with the virus. It is estimated that 2.3 million Africans died of AIDS in 2001.

--In several southern African countries, at least one in five adults is HIV-positive. Recent antenatal clinic data show that several parts of southern Africa have now joined Botswana with prevalence rates among pregnant women exceeding 30%.

--In West Africa, at least five countries (including populous Nigeria) are experiencing serious epidemics, with adult HIV prevalence exceeding 5%.

--On the eastern side of the continent, the downward arc in prevalence rates continues in Uganda-the first African country to have substantially reduced the effects of a major HIV/AIDS epidemic. HIV prevalence in pregnant women in urban areas has fallen for eight years in a row, from a high of 29.5% in 1992 to 11.25% in 2000.

--Determined prevention efforts in Senegal continue to bear fruit, thanks to strong political support for its programs. There is growing evidence that prevention efforts are bearing fruit elsewhere. One new study in Zambia shows urban men and women reporting less sexual activity, fewer multiple partners and more consistent use of condoms. This is in line with earlier indications that HIV prevalence is declining among urban residents in Zambia, especially among young women aged 15-24.

--Countries across the region are expanding and upgrading their responses. But the high prevalence rates mean that even exceptional success on the prevention front will now only gradually reduce the human toll.

Eastern Europe and Central Asia

--Eastern Europe-especially the Russian Federation-continues to experience the fastest-growing epidemic in the world, with the number of new HIV infections rising steeply. In 2001, there were an estimated 250 000 new infections in this region, bringing to 1 million the number of people living with HIV.

--In the Russian Federation, the startling increase in HIV infections of recent years is continuing. The total number of HIV infections reported since the epidemic began came to more than 129 000 in June 2001-up from the 10 993 reported for the end of 1998.

--At 1%, the adult HIV prevalence rate in Ukraine is the highest in the region. In Estonia, reported HIV infections have soared from 12 in 1999 to 1112 in the first nine months of 2001. Outbreaks of HIV-related injecting drug use are also being reported in several Central Asian republics, including Kazakhstan and, most recently, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

--In the Russian Federation and other parts of the former Soviet Union, the vast majority of reported HIV infections are related to injecting drug use, which has become unusually widespread among young people, especially young men. Given the high odds of transmission through needle sharing, the fact that the young people are also sexually active, and the high levels of sexually transmitted infections in the wider population, a huge epidemic may be imminent.

--In south-eastern Europe, rates of sexually transmitted infections and injecting drug use are also on the rise, although still at considerably lower levels than elsewhere in the region. Drug trafficking, along with the economic and psychological aftermath of recent conflicts, are increasing the likelihood that HIV epidemics will emerge in this region.

--In Central Europe, there is currently little indication of a potential rise in HIV infections. The Polish Government has successfully curtailed the epidemic among injecting drug users and prevented it from gaining a foothold in the general population. Prevalence remains low in countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia, where well-designed national HIV/AIDS programs are in operation.

Asia and the Pacific

--In Asia and the Pacific, 7.1 million people are now living with HIV/AIDS. An estimated 1 million people became infected in this region in 2001, while the epidemic claimed the lives of 435 000 people.

--HIV prevalence currently exceeds 1% in Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand. But the apparently low national prevalence rates in other countries in this region are dangerously deceptive. They hide localized epidemics in different areas, including some of the world's most populous countries.

--There is a serious threat of major, generalized epidemics. Surveillance data on China's huge population are sketchy, but the country's health ministry estimates that about 600 000 Chinese were living with HIV/AIDS in 2000. Given the recently observed rises in reported HIV infections and infection rates in many sub-populations in several parts of the country, the total number of people living with HIV/AIDS in China could well have exceeded one million by late 2001.

--Vast and populous India faces similar challenges. At the end of 2000, the national adult HIV prevalence rate was under 1%, yet this meant that an estimated 3.86 million Indians were living with HIV/AIDS-more than in any other country besides South Africa.

--After more than a decade of negligible rates of HIV, Indonesia is now seeing infection rates increase rapidly among injecting drug users and sex workers, in some places, along with an exponential rise in infection among blood donors (an indication of HIV spread in the population at large).

--Cambodia and Thailand have shown that prompt, large-scale prevention programs can hold the epidemic at bay. In Cambodia, concerted efforts, driven by strong political leadership and public commitment, lowered HIV prevalence among pregnant women to 2.3% at the end of 2000-down by almost a third from 1997.

The Middle East and North Africa

--In North Africa and the Middle East, infections are rising off a low base. Across the region, some 440 000 people are living with HIV/AIDS.

--The epidemic's advance is most marked in countries (such as Somalia and the Sudan) that are already experiencing complex emergencies. While HIV prevalence continues to be low in most countries in the region, increasing numbers of HIV infections are being detected in several countries, including the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and Pakistan.

High-income countries

--The notion that the epidemic is a thing of the past in high-income countries is unfounded. An estimated 1.5 million people live with HIV in those regions, many of them productively, thanks to pervasive antiretroviral therapy. But that achievement is overshadowed by the fact that prevention efforts are stalling.

--In the high-income countries, over 75 000 people acquired HIV in 2001. New evidence of rising HIV infection rates in North America, parts of Europe and Australia is emerging. Unsafe sex, reflected in outbreaks of sexually transmitted infections, and widespread injecting drug use are propelling these epidemics.

--In high-income countries there is evidence that HIV is moving into poorer and more deprived communities, with women at particular risk of infection. Young adults belonging to ethnic minorities (including men who have sex with men) face considerably greater risks of infection than they did five years ago in the USA. African-Americans, for instance, make up only 12% of the population of the USA, but constituted 47% of AIDS cases reported there in 2000.

--HIV prevalence rates among injecting drug users give special cause for alarm: 18% in Chicago and as high as 30% in parts of New York. Portugal is among the countries facing a serious epidemic among injecting drug users. Of the 3733 new HIV infections reported there in 2000, more than half were caused by injecting drug use. By contrast, needle and syringe exchange schemes in Australia are still slowing the increase in prevalence among injecting drug users.

--Reports of new HIV infections indicate that sex between men is an important transmission route in several countries, including Germany, Greece and the United Kingdom. In Japan, the number of HIV infections detected in men who have sex with men has risen sharply in recent years. There are also signs that the sexual behavior of youth in Japan could be changing significantly and putting this group at greater risk of HIV infection.

Latin America and the Caribbean

--More than 1.8 million people in this region are living with HIV/AIDS, including the 190 000 adults and children who became infected in 2001. Some 1.4 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in Latin America and 420 000 in the Caribbean.

--The Caribbean is the second-most affected region in the world. In several countries, HIV/AIDS has become a leading cause of death. Worst affected are Haiti (with the highest HIV adult prevalence rate in the world outside sub-Saharan Africa) and the Bahamas, where adult HIV prevalence rates are above 4%.

--Along with Barbados and the Dominican Republic, several Central American and Caribbean countries had adult HIV prevalence rates of at least 1% at the end of 1999, including Belize, Guyana, Honduras, Panama and Suriname. By contrast, prevalence was lowest in Bolivia, Ecuador and other Andean countries.

--Relatively low national HIV prevalence rates in several other countries mask the fact that the epidemic is already firmly lodged among specific population groups. However, Brazil's determined efforts show that countries can avert more extensive epidemics by stepping up their responses.

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