• Worldwide  an estimated 36.1 million adults and children are living with HIV/AIDS.
• 5.3 million adults and children (est.)  were newly infected with HIV in 2000 worldwide.
• Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 70% of the total worldwide population of people living with HIV/AIDS, 80% of the children living with HIV in the world and three-quarters of the more than 20 million people who have died of AIDS since the epidemic began.
• Sub-Saharan Africa contains only about 10% of the world's population.
• 80% of the world's women with HIV live in Africa and women account for nearly half of all new HIV infections worldwide.
• 55% of HIV-positive adults in Sub-Saharan Africa are women.
• Average infection rates in teenage African girls were over five times higher than  those in teenage boys.
• The 21 countries in the world with the highest prevalence of HIV are in Africa.
• The highest rates of HIV incidence in the world are found in Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
• One in seven people will become infected with HIV in South Africa.
• A child born in Zambia or Zimbabwe today is more likely than not to die of AIDS at some point in  her lifetime.
• In South Africa, one third of the country's semiskilled and unskilled work force will be HIV positive in 2005.
• In Senegal, condom usage during casual sex has risen from 1% to two thirds for men and to half for women due to government education efforts. Senegal has an infection rate of less than 2%, one of the lowest in Africa.
• Uganda's government was the first in Africa to recognize the danger of HIV to public health and economic development and has brought its prevalence rate down by education and prevention programs.
• Less than half of 1% of Africans with AIDS are receiving some form of drug therapy.
• One day's supply of the AIDS therapy drug stavudine costs $6.20  in Uganda as opposed to 56 cents in Brazil where a generic version is produced by the government.
• AIDS could shrink some African economies by up to 25% over the next 15 years.
• AIDS is costing African countries up to half a percent of per capita growth each year.
• The cost of antiretroviral therapy- $10,000- $20,000 per year per person would cover the annual health care expenditures for 200 people in Zimbabwe, where annual per capita on health is less than $100.
• The United States spends an estimated $52 billion on the medical consequences of obesity. This is more than 15 times the amount needed to treat AIDs epidemic in Africa.

Prepared By Joan Levinstein
Time Inc. Research Center