Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
39
HIV/AIDS, poverty, exclusion and the
third world
Tony Barnett
overwhelming majority of HIV-infected people
—more than 90 per cent—live in the developing
world. Most of these do not know that they are
infected. Table 39.1 shows the global situation at
the end of 1997.
Assuming that currently unbroken global
trends continue, UNAIDS estimates that more
than 40 million people will be living with HIV in
the year 2000. An estimated 2.3 million people
died of AIDS in 1997. These deaths represent a
fifth of the total 11.7 million AIDS deaths since
the beginning of the epidemic in the late 1970s.
Of the adults who died of AIDS in 1997, 46 per
INTRODUCTION
Recent estimates show that infection with HIV,
which causes AIDS, is far more common in the
world than was previously thought. UNAIDS (the
United Nations agency that coordinates activities
to combat the epidemic) and the WHO (the
World Health Organisation) estimate that over 30
million people were living with HIV infection at
the end of 1997. That is one in every 100 adults in
the 'sexually active' age group 15 to 50 years
worldwide. Included in this 30 million are 1.1
million children under the age of 15. The
Table 39.1
Global summary of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, December 1997.
Source:
UNAIDS Web Site, January 1998.
