"Gender discrimination puts many women at disproportionate risk of HIV infection. Indeed, few diseases are as rooted in gender inequality as HIV/AIDS. In sub-Saharan Africa, close to 60% of all adults with AIDS are women, and 75% of all young people aged 15 to 24 with HIV/AIDS are female."

 

 

	An Overview of the Global Epidemic

What's the impact of the global epidemic?

There are now over 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, roughly 95% of them in poor developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to more than 25 million people with HIV/AIDS, roughly 63% of the global total. But AIDS is spreading rapidly in Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, and many parts of Asia, particularly India and China.

AIDS kills many times more Africans every year than war, with an African dying of AIDS every 14 seconds. Deaths resulting from AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa will soon surpass the 20 million people who died during the plague that swept Europe during the 14th century, known as the Black Death. AIDS is expected to slash overall economic activity in Africa by 25%.

Nearly 5 million children under the age of 15 have been infected since the start of the epidemic, a large proportion of them girls. In 2005, at least 700,000 children were newly infected with HIV. Globally, a child dies of AIDS every minute of every day.

Some 12 million African children have lost one or both parents to AIDS, and the number of AIDS orphans worldwide is expected to reach 25 million by 2010.

In 2005, 4.9 million people were newly infected with HIV—roughly 13,500 people every day.

Gender discrimination puts many women at disproportionate risk of HIV infection. Indeed, few diseases are as rooted in gender inequality as HIV/AIDS. In sub-Saharan Africa, close to 60% of all adults with AIDS are women, and 75% of all young people aged 15 to 24 with HIV/AIDS are female.