• In 2005, an estimated 38.6 million people were living with HIV worldwide, and nearly 4.1 million being newly infected people. At least 2.8 million lost their lives to AIDS related causes in the same year.
• With a little more than one-tenth of the world’s population living in sub-Saharan Africa, this region remains the global epicenter of the epidemic with almost 64% of all people living with HIV-24.5 million.
• There were some 12.0 million orphans living in sub-Saharan Africa in 2005. In this region an estimated 930 000 adults and children died of AIDS in 2005: one-third of all AIDS deaths globally. The HIV incidence rate has peaked in most countries, and one in three people infected with HIV globally live in this sub-Saharan region.
• Three-quarters of all women (15 years and older) living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa. They comprise an estimated 13.2 million (59%) of adults living with HIV in Africa, south of the Sahara.
• An estimated 8.3 million people (2.4million among adult women) were living with HIV in Asia at the end of 2005, more than two-thirds of them in India. In Asia, approximately 930 000 people were newly infected with HIV in 2005; and AIDS claimed approximately 600 000 lives.
• It has been predicted that by 2015, in the 60 countries most affected by AIDS, the total population will be 115 million less than it would be in the absence of AIDS. Africa will account for nearly 75% of this difference in 2050.

*Statistics are based on 2005 data from UNAIDS and the ILO