section_path: Epidemiology
section_name: Epidemiology
paragraph_text: Epidemiology
  
  HIV/AIDS is considered a global pandemic. As of 2022, approximately 39.0 million people worldwide are living with HIV, the number of new infections that year being about 1.3 million. This is down from 2.1 million new infections in 2010. Among new infections, 46% are in women and are children globally. There were 630,000 AIDS related deaths in 2022, down from a peak of 2 million in 2005. The World Health Organization has reported that deaths from HIV and AIDS have "fallen by 61%, moving from the world’s seventh leading cause of death in 2000 to the twenty-first in 2021."
  
  Among persons living with HIV (PLWH), the largest proportion reside in eastern and southern Africa (20.6 million, 54.6%). This region also had the highest rate of adult and child deaths due to AIDS in 2020 (310,000, 46.6%). Sub-Saharan African adolescent girls and young women (aged 15–24 years) account for 77% of new infections among this age-range globally. Here, in contrast to other regions, adolescent girls and young women are three times more likely to acquire HIV than age-matched males. Despite these statistics, overall, new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths have substantially decreased in this region since 2010.
  
  Eastern Europe and central Asia has observed a 43% increase in new HIV infections and 32% increase in AIDS-related deaths since 2010, the highest of all global regions. These infections are predominantly distributed in persons who inject drugs, with gay men and other men who have sex with men or persons who engage in transaction sex the second and third populations most impacted in this region.
  
  At the end of 2019, United States indicated that approximately 1.2 million people aged ≥13 years were living with HIV, resulting in about 18,500 deaths in 2020. There were 34,800 estimated new infections in the US in 2019, 53% of which were in the southern region of the country. In addition to geographic location, significant disparities in HIV incidence exist among men, Black or Hispanic populations, and men who reported male-to-male sexual contact. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that in that year, 158,500 people or 13% of infected Americans were unaware of their infection.
  
  In the United Kingdom as of 2015, there were approximately 101,200 cases which resulted in 594 deaths. In Canada as of 2008, there were about 65,000 cases causing 53 deaths. Between the first recognition of AIDS (in 1981) and 2009, it has led to nearly 30 million deaths. Rates of HIV are lowest in North Africa and the Middle East (0.1% or less), East Asia (0.1%), and Western and Central Europe (0.2%). The worst-affected European countries, in 2009 and 2012 estimates, are Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Moldova, Portugal and Belarus, in decreasing order of prevalence.
  
  Groups at higher risk of acquiring HIV include persons who engage in transactional sex, gay men and other men who have sex with men, persons who inject drugs, transgender persons, and those who are incarcerated or detained.