What is HIV?

HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is the virus that causes AIDS. This virus may be passed from one person to another when infected blood, semen, or vaginal secretions come in contact with an uninfected person’s broken skin or mucous membranes.

In addition, infected pregnant women can pass HIV to their baby during pregnancy or delivery, as well as through breast-feeding. People with HIV have what is called HIV infection. Some of these people will develop AIDS as a result of their HIV infection.


What is AIDS?
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS, is a condition that describes an advanced state of HIV infection. With AIDS, the virus has progressed, causing significant loss of white blood cells (CD4 cells) or any of the cancers or infections that result from immune system damage. Those illnesses and infections are said to be "AIDS-defining" because they mark the onset of AIDS. Like HIV, there is no known cure for AIDS.

Worldwide HIV Epidemic
New global HIV estimates, released by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO), underscore the continued severity of the HIV pandemic. An estimated 33.2 million adults and children are living with HIV at the end of 2007, including 2.5 million newly infected. More than two million men, women and children died of AIDS-related complications over the past year, bringing the cumulative number of deaths to more than 20 million.

The epidemic is not homogeneous. Sub-Saharan Africa bears the brunt of the pandemic, accounting for more than two-thirds (68%) of persons living with HIV and more than three-quarters (76%) of deaths in this year. In other parts of the world, the epidemic remains concentrated in key populations, including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users and sex workers. In these populations, infection rates are often as high as 50%. Half of all infections worldwide are in women, particularly young women, who in many parts of the world remain powerless to control their own sexual lives in the face of violence and lack of protection of basic human rights.