Some facts about HIV/AIDS:

* There are 38,600,000 people living with AIDS around the world
* There are 60,000 people in Canada living with the disease - 49,400 men and 9,600 women

Courtesy of globalhealthfacts.org

Alarming Trends

* Every six and a half seconds, another person is infected with HIV.
* Every ten seconds, one person dies of AIDS-related illness.
* There are an estimated 11,200 new HIV infections and nearly 8,000 deaths every day.
* Sub-Saharan Africa is the region of the world that has been most severely impacted by HIV (in terms of the percentage of the region's population that is infected). This is followed by the Caribbean.
* Only one-tenth of the world's population lives in sub-Saharan Africa, yet almost 64 percent of those infected with HIV live in this region.
* India and China, the world's most populous countries, are experiencing rapid growth of HIV in certain subpopulations and geographic areas.
* More than two-thirds of those infected with HIV from Asia live in India.
* There has been a major increase in HIV infection in Eastern Europe and the nations of the former Soviet Union, a region which has among the fastest rates of new infections in the world.
* The majority of people living with HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe live in the Ukraine or the Russian Federation.
* The total number of people living with HIV continues to rise in high-income countries. In the US, for example, HIV prevalence reached its highest level to date in 2005.
* Even with a 3 percent increase in school enrolment, over the past four years, there has continued to remain a gender gap in education. An estimated 113 million school-age children are not currently in school, 54 pecent of which are girls. In high prevalence countries, girls' enrolment in school has decreased in the past decade. Girls are often taken out of school to care for sick relatives or to look after young siblings.
* Access to basic prevention services is inadequate. Less than one in five people at risk for HIV infection has access to prevention services.
* As of December 2005, an estimated 20 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS in low- and middle-income countries (1.3 million) received appropriate HIV treatment (including antiretroviral medicines).

Courtesy of the International AIDS Conference 2006.

_________________________________________________________

Taken from "An HIV/AIDS Primer & Facts" article on CityNews.ca

Also check out the XVI International AIDS Conference Website.