New, Better AIDS Numbers

November 30th, 2007 at 1:06 pm

When you’re talking about poverty and global disease, there’s nothing like stats to help people understand the scale of the tragedy. And here we have the latest stats on the AIDS epidemic from UNAIDS.

While the astronomical numbers of people living with HIV/AIDS can be overwhelming, there is important good news here. The number of people contracting AIDS and dying from AIDS annually are both on the decline.

Also, the methods for tacking and counting the AIDS crisis are getting better. As a result, UNAIDS revised their estimate of people living with AIDS from 39.5 million in 2006 to 33.2 million in 2007. This decline doesn’t mean that AIDS is any less prevalent, but knowledge is the first step in the fight.

Some key stats to remember:

• People living with HIV/AIDS globally: 33.2m
• New infections in 2007: 2.5m (6,800 per day)
• Deaths from HIV/AIDS in 2007: 2.1m (5,700 per day)

Download the full breakdown of the UNAIDS report (pdf).