Hiv and aids 2

How Many People Have HIV and AIDS?

Since the discovery of the virus more than 20 years ago, millions of people throughout the world have been infected with HIV. Most are adults, but there are kids and teens who have HIV, too. In the world today, AIDS remains an epidemic (say: eh-puh-deh-mik), which means that it affects a large number of people and continues to spread rapidly.

Right now, about 40 million people in the world are living with HIV infection or AIDS. This estimate includes 37 million adults and 2.5 million children. In the United States alone, more than 1 million people are living with HIV.
How Is HIV Spread?

HIV infection isn't like a cold or the flu. A person cannot get HIV by hugging or holding the hand of, sharing a school bus or classroom with, or visiting the home of someone who has HIV. HIV is passed only through direct contact with another person's body fluids, such as blood. The majority of people in North America get infected with HIV by:

having sexual contact with a person who has HIV
sharing needles or syringes (used to inject illegal drugs) with a person who has HIV

Other ways of getting HIV can occur when:

an infected pregnant woman passes it to her unborn child (which can be prevented by treating the mother and child around the time the baby is delivered). Because of the risk to an untreated baby, every pregnant woman should be tested for HIV.
a person has a blood transfusion (say: trans-fyoo-zhun) from a fairly large volume of blood. But in North America today, all donated blood is tested for HIV, so the risk of getting HIV is less than 1 in a million.