• Total number of AIDS deaths since the beginning of the epidemic until end 2001: 21.8 million
• Total number of women killed by AIDS since beginning of the epidemic until end 2001: 9 million
• Total number of children killed by AIDS since the beginning of the epidemic: 4.3 million
• Total number of AIDS orphans since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic until end 2001: 14 million
• Number of people newly infected with HIV in 2003: 5 million
• Number of children under the age of 15 newly infected in 2003: 700,000
• Number of people living with HIV/AIDS in 2003: 40 million
• Number of women living with HIV/AIDS in 2003: 18.5 million
• Number of children under 15 years old living with HIV/AIDS in 2003: 3 million
• Number of AIDS deaths in 2003: 3 million
• Number of women who died from AIDS in 2003: 1.1 million
• Number of children under 15 years old who died from AIDS in 2003: 500,000
• More than one in five
pregnant women are HIV-infected in most countries in Southern Africa.
• Southern Africa is home to about 30%
of people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, yet this region has less than 2% of the world's population.
• A mere 1%
of pregnant women in heavily–affected countries have access to services aimed at precenting mother-to-child HIV transmission.
• Sub-Saharan Africa remains by far the region worst-affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In 2003, an estimated 26.6 million
people in this refion were living with HIV, including the 3.2 million who became infected during the past year. AIDS killed approximately 2.3 million people in 2003.
• Côte d'Ivoire, where more than one in ten
pregnant women have HIV infections in some of the country's regions, is still saddled with the highest HIV prevalence in West Africa.
• Over 70%
of countries reporting from Africa on efforts to reduce HIV transmission to infants and young children have virtually no programmes to administer prophylactic antiretroviral therapy to women during childbirth and to newborns.
• Almost half
the African countries reporting have not adopted legislation to prevent discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS, and only one in four countries report that at least 50% of patients with other sexually transmitted infections (co-factors for HIV infection) are being diagnosed, counselled and treated.
• It is now estimated that around 1 million
people aged 15-49 are living with HIV in the Russian Federation. Women account for an increasing share of newly diagnosed HIV infections in the Russian Federation-33% in 2002, compared to 24% a year earlier.<
• At 2,300
in 2002, the total number of HIV diagnoses in Latvia has risen five-fold since 1999. Just four years ago, Estonia reported 12 new HIV cases; in 2002, 899 people were newly diagnosed with the virus. Lithuania is on a similar path. There, the 72 new HIV cases detected in 2001 increased more than five-fold in 2002.
• Over 1 million
people in Asia and the Pacific acquired HIV in 2003, bringing to an estimated 7.4 million the number of people now living with the virus. A further 500,000 people are estimated to have died of AIDS in 2003.
• The HIV/AIDS picture in South Asia remains dominated by the epidemic in India, where between 3.82 and 4.58 million
people were infected nationally by the end of 2002.
• More than 2 million
people are now living with HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean, including the estimated 200,000 that contracted HIV in the past year. At least 100,000 people died of AIDS in the same period-the highest regional death toll after sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

Source: Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic, 2002, UNAIDS.
Global Summary of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic, December 2003, UNAIDS.