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HIV/AIDS in the Developing World
 Africa,
Asia, and Latin America lead the world in HIV infection, with an estimated
two-thirds of the world’s infections occurring in Africa, followed
by 20% in Asia and 4% in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the former
Soviet Union and China, recent surges in HIV and other STIs and increasing
numbers of injection drug users are cause for growing concern.
HIV/AIDS
in Africa
In Sub-Saharan Africa, home
to the majority of adults and children currently living with the disease,
AIDS is now the leading cause of death among Africans of all ages.
- Of the more than 40 million
children and adults currently living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, an estimated
70% are in Africa.
- Approximately three-quarters
of the people who have died of AIDS since the epidemic began have been
Africans, with 2.4 million Africans dying of HIV-related causes in 2000
alone.
- One in 10 of adults ages
15 to 49 is living with the virus throughout the subcontinent, and in
seven countries more than 20% of the population is infected.
- In several Sub-Saharan
African countries, as many as one-third of all children have already
lost at least one parent to AIDS.
- Approximately 14 million
children have been orphaned in Africa due to HIV/AIDS, and 40 million
more are expected to be orphaned by the disease within the next 10 years.
- According to UNAIDS estimates,
AIDS will eventually claim the lives of approximately one-third of today’s
15-year-olds in the eight Sub-Saharan African countries with the highest
prevalence of HIV.
- The rates of HIV infection
in women have surpassed those of men in Sub-Saharan Africa. Women now
represent 55% of all adult infections in the region.
- Rates of infection among
women in antenatal clinics have been found to be as high as 20 to 50%
in some settings.
- Infection rates in young
Sub-Saharan African women are far higher than in young men. Rates in
teenage girls in some countries are five times higher than in teenage
boys.
- South Africa has the largest
number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the world, as well as one of
the world’s fastest-growing epidemics. Already, one in four South
African women between ages 20 and 29 are infected with the virus.
- In Botswana, 35.8% of adults
are now infected with HIV, compared with an estimated 10% in 1992.
- In Africa, the effects
of losing an entire generation have created economic and social dislocation.
Families have lost means of support, industry has lost workers, and
the health system has been overwhelmed.
On the positive side, prevention
efforts can also have a profound effect. For example, UNAIDS reports that
in Kampala, Uganda, prevention efforts sent HIV prevalence rates among
teenage women plummeting from 28% in 1991 to 6% in 1998.
© 2007 EngenderHealth
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