• Of the 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS today, over 95% live in developing countries. In developing countries, less than 10% of those infected have access to antiretroviral therapy, which is used to treat HIV/AIDS.
  
  
• Africa is home to nearly 70% of adults and 80% of children living with HIV in the world, and has buried three-quarters of the more than 20 million worldwide who have died of AIDS since the epidemic begin.
  
  
• Infection rates in young African women are far higher than in young men, with rates in teenage girls in some countries five times higher than in teenage boys.  Among young people in their early 20s, the rates are three times higher in women.  There are an estimated 12 women living with HIV for every 10 men in Africa.
  
  
• In southern Africa, AIDS is set to wipe out half a century of development gains as measured by life expectancy at birth.  From 44 years in the early 1950s, life expectancy rose to 59 in the early 1990s.  Now, a child born between 2005 and 2010 can once again expect to die before his or her 45th birthday.
  
  
• 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 15 year-olds.
  
  
• 39 million people worldwide are infected with HIV/AIDS and more than 90% of them live in developing countries.
  
  
• Every day, 8,500 people die and another 13,500 contract the HIV virus, nearly 1,700 of whom are children.
  
  
• In developing countries, there are approximately 6 million AIDS patients in need of life-saving medicines, but only 440,000 currently have access.

Sources: UNAIDS, World Health Organization (WHO)

Global Poverty

• 1.2 billion people live on less than U.S. $1 dollar a day.
  
  
• Over half of the world's population - 3 billion people - lives on less than U.S. $2 per day.
  
  
  
  
• Every year, 6 million children die from malnutrition before their 5th birthday.
  
  
• Over 11 million children die each year from preventable causes like malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia.

Source: United Nations Development Programme; Sustainable Human Development and UN Millennium Project.

• More than 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa—nearly half the population—live on less than $1 a day. This number is expected to rise to 400 million by 2015.

Source: World Bank

• In 2000, the nations of the world agreed to a set of “Millennium Development Goals” to reduce poverty, send children to school and ensure that families have access to clean water. Africa is the region least likely to meet these goals.

Source: African Development Bank

Education

• There are currently 121 million primary-school aged children in the world out of school and 140 million children worldwide who have never been to any school at all.  For less than the amount of money that Europeans and Americans spend on pet food every year, basic education could be provided for every child in the world.
  
  

Source: Global Campaign for Education

• Experts agree that investing in education is one of the best ways to reduce poverty and to fight the spread of AIDS, especially among girls. In the 1990s, the rate of HIV infection in educated women decreased by half compared to negligible decline among women with no education.

Source: Global Campaign for Education

Water

Over one billion people do not have access to clean water.  Every 15 seconds, a child dies from a disease associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.

Source: WaterAid