Report details spread of global AIDS epidemic

The number living with the disease is up by 2.5 million since 2004, whilst those newly infected rose by around 400,000 over the same period. Newly acquired infections of young people between 15 and 24 were responsible for 40 percent of the total.

The report notes: “In the past two years the number of people living with HIV increased in every region in the world. The most striking increases have occurred in East Asia and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where the number of people living with HIV in 2006 was over one fifth (21 percent) higher than in 2004.”

Sub-Saharan Africa still bears the brunt of disease with nearly two-thirds of the global number of people with HIV, around 25 million. An estimated 2.8 million became newly infected this year whilst 70 percent of the deaths due to AIDS, around 2 million, were in this region of the world. The report notes that women are disproportionably affected: “Not only are they more likely to than men to be infected with HIV, but in most countries they are also more likely to be the ones caring for people living with HIV.” The report notes many women are being infected by their husbands who have caught the disease as a result of having paid sex. In Mumbai it was found that 54 percent of sex workers are HIV infected.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/hiv-j13.shtml