New figures from the United Nations show very slight progress against the AIDS virus, with a small drop in new infections since 2001 and more people getting treatment for the fatal and incurable virus.
Here are some facts about AIDS in 2007 from the United Nations AIDS agency UNAIDS:
- An estimated 33 million people are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.
- 2.7 million people became newly infected with HIV in 2007, down from 3 million new infections in 2001.
- AIDS killed 2 million people in 2007.
- More than two-thirds - 67 percent - of people infected with HIV live in Africa. HIV infects 5 percent of African adults.
- 60 percent of those infected in Africa are women, and globally, half of all people infected with the virus are women.
- In Africa, most HIV infections are transmitted through sex between a man and a woman. Outside Africa, most new infections are among men who have sex with men, injecting drug users and sex workers.
- An estimated 370,000 children under the age of 15 became infected with HIV in 2007. The number of infected children grew from 1.6 million in 2001 to 2 million in 2007.
- More than 12 million children in Africa were orphaned by AIDS in 2007.
- Nearly 3 million people are now receiving treatment with drug cocktails that can hold the virus at bay, or about 31 percent of those who need them.
- In Asia an estimated 5 million people were infected with HIV in 2007.
- AIDS continues to spread in Eastern Europe, with 1.5 million cases in 2007 - most in Russia and Ukraine.
- An estimated 230,000 people in the Caribbean and 140,000 in Latin America are infected.
