Up to six million people may have been infected with HIV last year world-wide, according to the latest projections compiled by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and the World Health Organisation.
Countries in southern Africa continue to experience a worsening epidemic, even as transmission rates appear to have stabilised in West and East Africa, experts warn. In South Africa alone, an estimated 2.9 million adults are living with HIV, over 700,000 infected in 1997 alone.
In India it is estimated that 4 million people are already infected with HIV. China is estimated to have nearly half a million people living with HIV, and in Cambodia, one in thirty pregnant women are HIV-positive.
Read the full report at http://www.unaids.org/highband/document/epidemio/june98/global_report/rep_html/report1.html