Home >> United States & Canada >> Social Security & Health  Email  Print American and Global AIDS and HIV Statistics and Information Claire Berlinski and Okan Altiparmak - 4/2/2005 It's been over twenty years since the HIV epidemic began. Yet, HIV constantly increases and is already a worldwide health problem. While notable success is arising in some areas, threatening trends are happening in others. What is the current status of the epidemic and how is our battle going?
Treatments and Medications advancement
New treatments continue to be developed, stressing decreased pill burden, fewer daily doses, and new mechanisms of action. These developments continue to slow the advancement from HIV infection to AIDS defining sicknesses. AIDS deaths and fresh AIDS cases been reduced and people with HIV are surviving longer and healthier. However, since medicines are helping AIDS patients to live happily, AIDS universality (the number of people living with AIDS) continues to rise. One source reports a 12% increase in AIDS prevalence since 1995.
In addition, a decrease in new AIDS cases means an increase in HIV prevalence (number of people surviving with HIV that didn't develop into full-blown AIDS).. This increase in HIV prevalence means a growing burden on our prevention and treatment services, and diminishing resources to take care of the growing HIV population.
Growing Segments of the HIV Population
Sources in the US report an average of 40,000 new HIV infections each year. A disturbing trend is that a growing proportion of these new cases are minorities and women. A large share of infection in African American women comes from heterosexual contact with men who had sex with other men. Research has shown that because of the heavy stigma related with homosexuality in the African-American community, gay and bisexual men are having sex with both men and women to avoid prejudices. Moreover, these stigmas de-motivate testing and stimulate men "underground" to have sex with other men, describes Dr. Helene Gayle of the CDC, further resisting educational efforts.
Progress is Slowing
Recent data reveals that the degree by which AIDS deaths are descending has slowed. From 1998 to 1999, AIDS a death lowered by 20%, at the same time the rate of decline prior to that was around 42%. Now Officials fear viral changes for drug therapy, poor consistency, and HIV infections are originating to take their worth. In other words the drugs are starting to loose their fitness. This fact shows the importance of continued drug development both in present categories as well as the development of new mechanisms of action. Vaccines are still a ways away and the newest class of drug, the fusion inhibitors, has one and only remedy, Fuzeon, in widespread use.
HIV/AIDS Statistics
The latest statistics on the world epidemic of AIDS & HIV were announced by UNAIDS in July 2004. The report gives the latest AIDS and HIV statistics from around the world and statistics for individual countries.
Number of people (in millions) living with HIV/AIDS in 2003*:
Total: 37.8
Adults: 35.7
Women: 17
Children <15: 2.1
Misc. facts and figures
Between 1981 and the end of 2003 total number of AIDS deaths: 20 million.
Number of children orphaned by AIDS living in Sub-Saharan Africa: 12 million.
By December 2003 women accounted for nearly 50% of over all population of world living with HIV.
Young people account for half of all new HIV infections allover the world, more than 6000 becomes infected with HIV every day.
An estimated five million people in low and middle-income countries do not have the AIDS drugs, which could save their lives.
WORLDWIDE HIV/AIDS Statistics
· As of December 1997, an estimated 30.6 million people worldwide -- 29.5 million adults and 1.1 million children younger than 15 years -- were living with HIV/AIDS.
· Worldwide, approximately one in every 100 adults aged 15 to 49 is HIV- infected.
· Approximately 41 percent of the 29.5 million adults living with HIV/AIDS worldwide are women; this proportion is growing.
· All over the world approximately 5.8 million new HIV infections occurred during 1997; that is, nearly 16,000 infections each day. More than 90 percent of these new infections occurred in developing countries.
· By the year 2000, an estimated 40 million people worldwide will be HIV-infected.
· Through 1997, cumulative HIV/AIDS-related deaths worldwide numbered nearly 11.7 million -- 9 million adults and 2.7 million children.
· Alone in 1997, HIV/AIDS- related sicknesses caused the deaths of approximately 2.3 million people worldwide, including an estimated 460,000 children younger than 15 years. 1
· Since the starting of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, all over the world nearly 8.2 million children younger than 15 years have been orphaned due to the precipitous deaths of HIV-infected parents. 1
· Worldwide, more than 75% of all adult HIV infections have occurred from heterosexual intercourse. 2
· Mother-to-child transmission has accounted for more than 90% of all HIV infections worldwide in infants and children. 1,2
HIV/AIDS IN THE UNITED STATES
· In the United States, 612,078 cases of AIDS had been recorded to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as of June 30, 1997.
· Of these, 511,934 (84 %) were males aged 13 or more than 13, 92,242 (15 %) were females aged 13 or more than 13, and 7,902 (1%) were youngsters under age 13.
· New AIDS cases reported to the CDC declined 12 % from the first six months of 1996 (33,590 cases) to the first six months of 1997 (29,520 cases).
· From 1985 to 1996, the proportion of U.S. AIDS cases in women recorded each year enhanced from 7 % to 20 %.
· Among U.S. residents with AIDS reported in 1996, blacks accounted for a larger proportion of AIDS cases (41 percent) than whites (38%) for the first time. Hispanics reported for 19 % of U.S. AIDS cases recorded in 1996; Asians/Pacific peoples and American Indians/Alaskan aboriginals, less than 1 %. A recent study estimated that 650,000 to 900,000 U.S. residents were living with HIV infection.
· As of July 1997, an estimated 259,000 people with AIDS were living in the United States.
· In 1996, the rate of new AIDS cases per 100,000 populations in the United States was 89.7 among blacks, 41.3 among Hispanics, 13.5 among whites, 10.7 among American Indians/Alaskan aboriginals, and 5.9 among Asians/Pacific Islanders.
· Among men diagnosed with AIDS in the U.S. in 1996, homosexual contact accounted for the major proportion of cases (50 %), resulted by injection drug use (23 percent).
· Among women diagnosed with AIDS in the U.S. in 1996, most accumulated HIV infection through sexual intercourse with a man with or at risk of HIV infection (40 %) or injectional drug use (34 percent).
· Heterosexual transmission accounts for a growing proportion of AIDS cases in the United States. From 1988 to 1995, the proportion of U.S. AIDS cases acknowledged to heterosexual contact each year grew from 4.8 percent to 17.7 percent.
· Through June 1997, 379,258 deaths among people with AIDS had been reported to the CDC. 5 AIDS is now the second leading cause of death in the United States among people aged 25 to 44.
· Approximately 50,140 deaths among people with AIDS occurred in the U.S. in 1995. In 1996, the estimated number of AIDS deaths in the United States was 23 % lower (38,780). AIDS deaths dropped 44 % from the first 6 months of 1996 (21,460 deaths) to the first six months of 1997 (approx 12,040 deaths).
REFERENCES
a.UNAIDS: Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic, December 1997.
b Global burden of the HIV pandemic. 1996; 348:99-106.
c Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.: Trends in AIDS incidence -U. S., 1996. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly publication 1997; 46(37): 861-867.
d Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HIV/AIDS review Report 1996;8(no.2):1-40.
e. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention. HIV/AIDS Surveillance journal 1997; 9(no.1): 1-37.
f. Karon JM, et al. Universality of HIV disease in the U.S., 1984 to 1992. Journal of the American Medical Association 1996; 276(2): 126-131.
g. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. September 1997.
h. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Monthly Vital Statistics Publication, 1997. Vol 46, no. 1, suppl. 2.
i. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention., February 1998. Claire Berlinski is a freelance journalist who lives in Istanbul. Okan Altiparmak is a consultant and filmmaker, also based in Istanbul.
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