What is HIV
HIV is a virus. Viruses infect the cells of living organisms and replicate (make new copies of themselves) within those cells. A virus can damage the cells it replicates in, which is one of the things that can make an infected creature become ill.
People can become infected with HIV from other people who already have it, and when they are infected they can then go on to infect other people. Basically, this is how HIV is spread.
HIV stands for the 'Human Immunodeficiency Virus'. Someone who is infected with HIV is said to be 'HIV+' or 'HIV positive'.
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What is AIDS
A damaged immune system is not only more vulnerable to HIV, but also to the attacks of other infections. It won't always have the strength to fight off things that wouldn't have bothered it before.
As time goes by, a person who has been infected with HIV is likely to become ill more and more often until, usually several years after infection, they become ill with one of a number of particularly severe illnesses. It is at this point that they are said to have AIDS - when they first become seriously ill, or when the number of immune system cells left in their body drops below a particular point. Different countries have slightly different ways of defining the point at which a person is said to have AIDS rather than HIV.
AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is an extremely serious condition, and at this stage the body has very little defence against any sort of infection.
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Vital Statistics Worldwide
Over 22 million people have died from AIDS.
Over 42 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, and 74 percent of these infected people live in sub-Saharan Africa.
Over 19 million women are living with HIV/AIDS.
By the year 2010, five countries (Ethiopia, Nigeria, China, India, and Russia) with 40 percent of the world's population will add 50 to 75 million infected people to the worldwide pool of HIV disease.
There are 14,000 new infections every day (95 percent in developing countries). HIV/AIDS is a "disease of young people" with half of the 5 million new infections each year occurring among people ages 15 to 24.
The UN estimates that, currently, there are 14 million AIDS orphans and that by 2010 there will be 25 million.
Source: www.until.org
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Vital Statistics USA
For complete information please see http://www.avert.org. AVERT.org has several other USA statistics pages, as well as a more general discussion of HIV & AIDS in the USA. The following information is taken directly from AVERT.org.
Summary
AIDS was first identified in the USA in 1981. The epidemic has now spread to every part of the USA and to all sectors of society.
In 2006, it is thought that 1 million+ people are living with HIV in the USA and that 500,000+ have died after developing AIDS.
American HIV surveillance data are not comprehensive so many statistics must be based on reports of AIDS diagnoses. In interpreting such AIDS statistics, it is important to remember that they do not correspond to new HIV infections. Most people live with HIV for several years before developing AIDS.
People living with AIDS
At the end of 2005, the Center For Disease Control www.cdc.gov/hiv/ ("CDC") estimates that 437,982 people were living with AIDS in the USA. The chart below shows the ethnicities of these people, revealing that black Americans have been disproportionately affected.
The charts below show how adults and adolescents living with AIDS most likely became infected with HIV. Around 77% of adults and adolescents living with AIDS are men.
An estimated 1,411 children aged under 13 were living with AIDS at the end of 2005, most of whom probably acquired the infection from their mothers.
People with AIDS are surviving longer and are contributing to a steady increase in the number of people living with AIDS. This trend will continue as long as the number of new diagnoses exceeds the number of people dying each year.
AIDS diagnoses and deaths
In June 1981, the first cases of what is now known as AIDS were reported in the USA. During the 1980s, there were rapid increases in the number of AIDS cases and deaths of people with AIDS. Cases peaked with the 1993 expansion of the case definition, and then declined. The most dramatic drops in both cases and deaths began in 1996, with the widespread use of combination antiretroviral therapy.
The rate of decrease in AIDS diagnoses slowed in the late 1990s. After reaching a plateau, the estimated number of diagnoses increased slightly each year from 2001 to 2005, reaching 45,669 in the last year. In total, an estimated 988,376 people have been diagnosed with AIDS.
The number of deaths among people with AIDS has remained relatively stable since 1999; there were an estimated 17,011 deaths in 2005. Since the beginning of the epidemic, an estimated 550,394 people with AIDS have died in the USA.
Who is affected by AIDS?
During the 1990s, the epidemic shifted steadily toward a growing proportion of AIDS cases among black people and Hispanics and in women, and toward a decreasing proportion in MSM, although this group remains the largest single exposure group. Black people and Hispanics have been disproportionately affected since the early years of the epidemic. In absolute numbers, blacks have outnumbered whites in new AIDS diagnoses and deaths since 1996, and in the number of people living with AIDS since 1998.
From 2000 to 2005, the estimated number of new AIDS cases increased in all racial/ethnic groups. Over the same period, the estimated number of new AIDS diagnoses increased by 17% among women and by 16% among men. The number of new cases probably due to heterosexual contact grew by 42%; cases probably due to sex between men grew by 24%; and the number among injecting drug users fell by less than 1%.
During 2005 there were an estimated 58 paediatric AIDS diagnoses, compared to 187 in 1999 and 799 in 1994. The decline in paediatric AIDS incidence is associated with more HIV testing of pregnant women and the use of zidovudine (AZT) by HIV-infected pregnant women and their newborn infants.
The age group 35-44 years accounted for 38% of all AIDS cases diagnosed in 2005. Nearly three-quarters of all people who have died with AIDS did not live to the age of 45.
The fastest growing segment of HIV/AIDS cases reported in the world are those under 25 years old. Young people (under 25 years old) account for half of all new HIV infections worldwide - around 6,000 become infected with HIV every day.
HIV statistics
A total of 954,544 AIDS cases have been reported in the 50 states of the USA, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Of those with known residence, 85% were reported in major metropolitan areas.
New York has accounted for 189,724 cases, Los Angeles for 56,261, and Miami for 53,598. In 2005, the highest rates of new AIDS diagnoses were in Miami (44.9 per 100,000 people), Baltimore (40.4), Memphis (33.3) and New York (32.8).
At the end of 2005, the CDC estimates that there were 476,749 people living with HIV/AIDS in the 37 areas that have a history of confidential name-based HIV reporting, based on reported diagnoses and deaths. However, the total number of people living in the USA with HIV/AIDS is thought to be between 1,039,000 and 1,185,000. The discrepancy between these figures is due to several factors including:
- confidential name-based reporting of HIV diagnoses has not yet been implemented in all states6
- anonymous tests, including home tests, are excluded from case reports
- one in every four people living with HIV has not even had their infection diagnosed, let alone reported.7
During 2005, an estimated 38,133 new diagnoses of HIV infection were reported from the 37 areas with a history of confidential name-based reporting, a number that has remained relatively stable since 2001. Of these cases, 74% were among adult or adolescent males, 26% were among adult or adolescent females, and less than 1% were among children under 13 years of age. Recent HIV reports represent a mixture of people with recent infection and others who may have been infected in the past but are only now being diagnosed.
Source: www.Avert.org