•
By far the worst-affected region, sub-Saharan Africa is now
home to 29.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS.
• Approximately 3.5 million new infections occurred there
in 2002, while the epidemic claimed the lives of an estimated
2.4 million Africans in the past year.
• Ten million young people in Africa (age 14-24) and almost
3 million children under 15 are living with HIV.
• Africa is home to nearly 70% of adults and 80% of children
living with HIV in the world, and has buried three-quarters
of the more than 20 million worldwide who have died of AIDS
since the epidemic began.
• Infection rates in young African women are far higher
than in young men, with rates in teenage girls in some countries
five times higher than in teenage boys. Among young people in
their early 20s, the rates were three times higher in women.
In Africa, women’s peak infection rates occur at earlier
ages than men’s. This helps explain why there are an estimated
12 women living with HIV for every 10 men in this region.
• Infection rates in East Africa, once the highest on
the continent, hover above those in West Africa but have been
exceeded by the rates now being seen in the southern cone.
•
In four Southern African countries, national adult HIV prevalence
has risen higher than thought possible, exceeding 30%: Botswana
(38.8%), Lesotho (31%), Swaziland (33.4%) and Zimbabwe (33.7%).
• By the year 2010, crude death rates in Cameroon will
have more than doubled as result of HIV/AIDS. An estimated 340,000
people in Ghana are currently living with HIV.
• The prevalence rate among adults in Ethiopia and Kenya
has reached double-digit figures and continues to rise.
• HIV-positive patients have occupied 39% of the beds
in Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya , and 70% of
the beds in the Prince Regent Hospital in Bujumbura, Burundi.
Hopeful signs that the epidemic could be eventually
be brought under control:
• A decline in HIV prevalence has been detected among
young inner-city women in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Infection levels
among women aged 15-24 attending antenatal clinics dropped from
24% in1995 to 15.1% in 2001.
• Uganda continues to present proof that the epidemic
does yield to human intervention.
