More than 36 million people worldwide are now suffering from AIDS or are HIV-positive, according to the latest figures published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNAIDS programme.
A report published at the end of last year showed that some 5.3 million people became infected with the HIV virus in 2000. It said the illness has claimed the lives of an estimated 21.8 million adults and children since the epidemic began about 20 years ago.
In the year 2000 alone three million people are estimated to have died of the disease. Eighty per cent of them, or 2.4 million, were in sub-Saharan Africa, which is still the hardest-hit region, accounting for 70 per cent of all HIV/AIDS cases and 72 per cent of the 5.3 million new HIV infections last year.
Of those 5.3 million new reported cases, 600,000 of them were in children aged 15 and under.
The estimated number of new infections in sub-Saharan Africa appears to have stabilised. A total of 3.8 million new infections in sub-Saharan Africa in 2000 is slightly down on the figure of four million during 1999.
Meanwhile, eastern Europe and central Asia have continued to see some of the sharpest increases in HIV infections with an estimated 250,000 people newly infected in 2000, bringing to 700,000 the regional total of people with HIV or AIDS.
UNAIDS also warns that the potential for infection to be spread in east Asia through the sex industry and drug use is enormous.
Botswana has the highest incidence of HIV infection in the world, with more than 35 per cent of adults carrying the virus, while in Zambia the figure is around 20 per cent.