PARIS, Oct 6, 2008 (AFP) - Following is a snapshot of the global AIDS pandemic after France's Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were both awarded the Nobel Medicine Prize Monday for their discovery of the HIV virus.
- TOTAL: Around 33 million people were living with HIV in 2007. Around two million are children.
- DEATHS: Some two million people died of AIDS-related causes last year. In 2005, the death toll was around 2.2 million.
- NEW INFECTIONS: The AIDS virus infected 2.7 million people in 2007, or nearly 7,500 people per day.
- CHILDREN: Around 370,000 of the new infections occurred among children under the age of 15. The annual tally has progressively fallen since 2001, thanks to drugs that prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus.
- LEVELLING OFF: Because of demographic rise, the epidemic has now stabilised in terms of prevalence, reaching a plateau of around 0.8 percent of the world's population. But this is because of demographic growth. In terms of raw numbers, the tally of infections is still edging up.
- VARIATIONS: New infections fell in several countries, including Botswana and Mozambique, but this success was offset by increases in other countries, including China, Indonesia, Kenya and Russia.
- AFRICAN FOCUS: Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 67 percent of all people living with HIV worldwide. More than 12 million African children have lost one or both parents to AIDS.
- DRUG LIFELINE: Antiretrovirals are now saving lives in significant numbers. Three million people now receive these HIV-suppressing drugs in poor countries, although this is still only 31 percent of the total who need them.
- MONEY: Ten billion dollars was spent on fighting HIV/AIDS in poor countries in 2007, but was still more than eight billion dollars short of what was needed. Funding will have to increase by 50 percent by 2010 to maintain the current increase in drug access.
Source: 2008 UNAIDS Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic
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