Global HIV/AIDS and the Developing World

What are the impacts of HIV/AIDS in the developing world?

Human impacts—HIV/AIDS is one of the largest challenges the global community has ever faced.

• Since 1981, more than 25 million people have died of AIDS. Last year alone, 3 million people died of AIDS.
• By 2010, life expectancy in some of these countries might fall to only 30 years--a reversal to the level of a century ago.
• Today 40 million people around the world are living with HIV infection or AIDS; more than two-thirds of those infected are in Africa and the Caribbean.
• HIV/AIDS is also a major health threat in Russia, and there is a strong potential for rapid spread of the infection in China and India.
• HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects women.  In 2001, of young women aged 15 to 25 years, 6% to 11% were living with HIV, compared with 3% to 6% of young men in that age group.