Africa: AIDS Facts
AIDS Facts
Several worldwide humanitarian organizations compile facts and figures about the HIV/AIDS Pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa: the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and others. Accurate statistics are difficult to come by for obvious reasons of accessibility, record keeping, government resources, and other cultural barriers.
Here is the current information from the United Nations web site. A new set of findings and predictions will be released on December 1 – World AIDS Day.
Of the over 42 million people living with HIV/AIDS, 60-70 percent of them live in sub-Saharan Africa. The UN estimates there are 12-14 million AIDS orphans today and by 2010 - two years - there will be 18 million. 30,000 children die every day - or 2.9 million a year - of hunger and malnutrition and every 14 seconds a child is orphaned by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. And eight of every 10 children in the world whose parents have died of AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa.. As a result, the disease is in effect making orphans of a whole generation of children, jeopardizing their health, their rights, their well-being and sometimes their very survival, not to mention the overall development prospects of their countries. There are 14,000 new infections every day (95 percent in developing countries).
During the last decade, the proportion of children who are orphaned as a result of AIDS rose from 3.5% to 32% and will continue to increase exponentially as the disease spreads unchecked.