Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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United Press International - Tuesday, November 24, 1998
UNAIDS estimates today that has claimed nearly 14 million lives worldwide, 11.5 million in sub-Saharan Africa alone.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan says AIDS "is still an emerging epidemic with 95 percent of all infections and deaths occurring in the developing world."
In a message for World AIDS Day Dec. 1, Annan says: "Because the victims are mostly young adults, who would otherwise be raising families and supporting the economy, the repercussions are reaching crisis level.
"This tidal wave risks wiping out the hard-won gains of poor nations."
The Secretary-General points out that in Botswana, a child born early in the next decade can expect to live just past 40 -- instead of to age 70 in the absence of AIDS. By the year 2005 Zimbabwe estimates it will have more than 900,000 orphans under age 15.
Nearly half of all HIV infections occur in people aged 15-24 years and 75,000 people in Western Europe and North America were infected last year.
In his message, Annan also remembered Jonathan Mann, first director of the WHO's Global Program on AIDS, and his wife Mary Lou, AIDS researchers who died with several United Nations colleagues in a Swissair plane crash.
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