AIDS epidemic

HIV/AIDS is a global pandemic. As of 2014, approximately 36.9 million people are living with HIV globally. In 2012, approximately 17.2 million are men, 16.8 million are women and 3.4 million are less than 15 years old. There were about 1.8 million deaths from AIDS in 2010, down from 2.2 million in 2005.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the region most affected. In 2010, an estimated 68% (22.9 million) of all HIV cases and 66% of all deaths (1.2 million) occurred in this region. This means that about 5% of the adult population in this area is infected. Here, in contrast to other regions, women compose nearly 60% of cases.South Africa has the largest population of people with HIV of any country in the world, at 5.9 million. In Tanzania, HIV/AIDS was reported to have a prevalence of 6% among Tanzanian adults aged 15–49 in 2007–2008. This figure is lower than 2003 when the country's HIV/AIDS prevalence was 8.8%.

South & South East Asia (a region with about 2 billion people as of 2010, over 30% of the global population) has an estimated 4 million cases (12% of all people living with HIV), with about 250,000 deaths in 2010. Approximately 2.5 million of these cases are in India, where however the prevalence is only about 0.3% (somewhat higher than that found in Western and Central Europe or Canada). Prevalence is lowest in East Asia at 0.1%.

In 2008 approximately 1.2 million people in the United States had HIV; 20% did not realize that they were infected. Over the 10-year period from 1999–2008 it resulted in about 17,500 deaths per year. In the United Kingdom, as of 2009, there were approximately 86,500 cases and 516 deaths. In Australia, as of 2009, there were about 21,171 cases and around 23 deaths. In Canada as of 2008 there were about 65,000 cases and 53 deaths.

A reconstruction of its genetic history shows that the HIV pandemic almost certainly originated in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, around 1920.AIDS was first recognized in 1981 and by 2009 had caused nearly 30 million deaths.

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