When AIDS first started, no one could have predicted how the epidemic would spread across the world and how many millions of lives it would change. There was no real idea of what caused it and consequently, no real idea as to how to protect against it.
Now we know from bitter experience that HIV is the cause of AIDS and that it can devastate families, communities and whole countries. We have seen the epidemic knock decades off countries’ national development, widen the gulf between rich and poor nations and push already stigmatised groups closer to the margins of society.
We are living in an ‘international’ society, and HIV has become the first truly ‘international’ epidemic, easily crossing oceans and borders.
However, experience has also shown us that the right approaches, applied quickly enough with courage and resolve, can and do result in lower national HIV infection rates and less suffering for those affected by the epidemic. We have learned that if a country acts early enough, a national HIV crisis can be averted.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), it has been noted that a country with a very high HIV prevalence will often see this eventually stabilise, and even decline. In some cases this indicates, among other things, that people are beginning to change risky behaviour patterns, because they have seen and known people who have been killed by AIDS. It can also indicate that a large number of people are dying of AIDS.
Already, more than 30 million people around the world have died of AIDS-related diseases.  In 2010, 2.7 million people were newly infected with HIV, and 1.8 million men, women and children died of AIDS-related causes. Thirty four million people around the world are now living with HIV.
According to WHO, it is in Africa, in some of the poorest countries in the world that the impact of HIV has been most severe. At the end of 2009, there were nine countries in Africa where more than one tenth of the adult population aged 15-49 was infected with HIV.
In three countries, all in the southern cone of the continent, at least one adult in five is living with the virus. In Botswana, 24.8% of adults are now infected with HIV, while in South Africa, 17.8% are infected. With a total of around 5.6 million infected, South Africa has more people living with HIV than any other country.
AIDS is a disease that has left the medical community overwhelmed due to its epidemic nature. HIV/AIDS facts reveal that millions of deaths have been recorded all across the globe in the last 30 years due to this syndrome.
It is indeed a global epidemic that has been taken up as a challenge by the world community. The WHO reports that every year nearly two million people through AIDS and there have been nearly 27 million deaths, to date,  in the world due to this travesty of humanity.
There has been no other infectious killer in human society worst than AIDS. Middle and low-income countries have suffered the worst, especially the African and Asian countries. HIV/AIDS statistics are mind-boggling, thought provoking and certainly scary. While more than 90% of AIDS cases have been observed in the developing world, the developed world is not untouched by the increasing incidences of AIDS.
In November 2010, UNAIDS published its global epidemic AIDS report and estimated that nearly 33.3 million people were living with AIDS infection in 2009. Amongst the 33.3 million adults suffering from AIDS, nearly 50% of them were women. Knowing about HIV statistics is just a way to know more about the geographical distribution of this disease, so that the affected countries can be helped in a more profound way.
Just figuring out the number of people suffering from AIDS infections in the world is sufficient to highlight the endemic nature of this disease. While we know that millions are affected by HIV, let us know some crucial facts related to HIV infection.
Our Caribbean Region has also been hit hard by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In 2009, an estimated 17,000 people in the Caribbean became infected with HIV, and around 12,000 died of AIDS. After sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean has a higher HIV prevalence than any other area of the world, with one percent of the adult population infected.
Heterosexual sex is the main route of transmission throughout the Caribbean. Women are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection; more than half of people living with HIV are women.
Other vulnerable groups include men who have sex with men (MSM) who are often overlooked by prevention, treatment and care services. This is despite reports that HIV prevalence is as high as 32 percent among some groups of MSM.
In Guyana, the government, through the Ministry of Health and other collaborative agencies and organisations have invested heavily in the fight against HIV/AIDS and it has paid handsome dividends, drawing loud praise from UNAIDS Director of the Caribbean Regional Support Team, Ernest Messiah.
Guyana has a success story in the drastic reduction in cases of Mother-To Child Transmission which is credited to the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) programme.
The country’s ranking in over 50 countries that have achieved a 25 percent reduction in HIV prevalence in the last 10 years, also adds to the story.
“There are some successes here that we need to really celebrate,” Messiah said on Tuesday.
“He (President Ramotar) is very clear about what should be done and how to move forward in securing the successes you have had…,” Messiah said.
However, our success in the fight against HIV/AIDS must not encourage complacency. The fight must be sustained and intensified so that this scourge could be kept at the minimal level, because the damage to society and the national economy as a result of this scourge is most obvious.