New Delhi: Close to 40 million people the world over are now living with the dreaded HIV infection with almost half of the infected adults being women, a new UN AIDS report said on Tuesday (Nov 23, 2004).

The annual report by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) says that there is no single AIDS epidemic worldwide. Many regions and countries are experiencing diverse epidemics, some still in the early stages.

The number of people living with HIV globally has reached its highest level with an estimated 39.4 million people, up from an estimated 36.6 million in 2002, the report said.

The steepest increase in HIV infections occurred in East Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia over the past two years. The number of afflicted women has also risen in the regions during the period, it says.

In East Asia, the 50 per cent increase in HIV infections from 2002 to 2004 is largely attributable to growing epidemics in China, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Nearly half of the 37.2 million adults (aged 15-49 years) living with HIV are women, the report says. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the worst affected region, close to 60 per cent of adults living with HIV are women.

The number of children under-15 years estimated to be HIV positive is 2.2 million. The report says that 4.9 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2004 and 3.1 million people died of AIDS in the same year. Of this, 510,000 are children while 2.6 million are adults.