New UN Report Estimates Over One-Third of Todays 15-Year-Olds Will Die of AIDS in Worst-Affected Countries

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PRESS RELEASE
VUNICEF * UNDP UNFPA * UNDCP
UNESCO * WHO * WORLD BANK
US Media Office [phone]
N UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 16.00 GMT
111 IIII IIIIIIIIIII IiII 11 11 Geneva, 27 June 2000
5571095.0160.002
NEW UN REPORT ESTIMATES
OVER ONE-THIRD OF TODAY'S 15-YEAR-OLDS
WILL DIE OF AIDS IN WORST-AFFECTED COUNTRIES
* HIV/AIDS is causing dramatic shifts in demographics, with longranging
social consequences for hardest-hit nations
SMassive increase In resources needed to reduce the epidemic's spread and
impact
The ongoing spread of HIV in the world's hardest-hit regions, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, is
reversing years of declining death rates, causing drastic rises in mortality among young adults and
dramatically altering population structures in the most affected regions.
While the epidemic of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is stabilizing in many high-income
countries, as well as in a handful of developing nations, HIV prevalence rates among
1549-year-olds have now reached or exceeded 1.0% in 16 countries, all of them in sub-Saharan
Africa.
As high as these rates are, they greatly understate the demographic impact of AIDS. The
probability of dying of AIDS Is systematically higher than prevalence rates indicate Conservative
new analyses show that this is true even if countries manage to cut the risk of. becoming
HIV-infected in half over the next fifteen years. For example, where 15% of adults are currently
infected, no fewer than a third of today's 15-year-olds will die of AIDS. In countries where adult
prevalence rates exceed 15%, the lifetime risk of dying of AIDS is even greater, assuming again
that successful prevention programmes manage to halve the HIV risk.
* In countries such as South Africa and Zimbabwe, where a fifth or a quarter of the adult
population is infected, AIDS is set to claim the lives of around half of all I5-year-olds.
* In Botswana, where about one in three adults are already HIV-infected -- the highest
prevalence rate in the world - no fewer than two-thirds of today's 15-year-old boys will die
prematurely of AIDS.
These findings are contained in a new United Nations report that shows that current trends in HIV
infection will Increasingly have an impact on rates of infant, child and adult mortality, life
expectancy and economic growth in many countries. The latest Report on the global HIV/AIDS
epidemic, which Includes a country-by-country update on the global epidemic, was prepared by the