An estimated 40.8 million people worldwide were living with HIV at the end of 2024. That includes 39.4 million adults and 1.4 million children under 15. While new infections continue each year, expanded access to treatment has dramatically changed the outlook for people with the virus.
Global Numbers at a Glance
Of the 40.8 million people living with HIV globally, the vast majority are concentrated in a handful of regions. Africa carries the heaviest burden by far, with 26 million people living with HIV as of the most recent estimates. Within that, eastern and southern Africa alone account for 20.5 million cases, making it the epicenter of the global epidemic.
Other regions with significant numbers include South-East Asia at 4 million, the European region at 3.1 million, and the Western Pacific at 2.3 million. The remaining cases are spread across the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean, and other parts of the world.
HIV in the United States
About 1.2 million people aged 13 and older were living with HIV in the United States at the end of 2022, the most recent year with complete domestic data. Roughly 13% of those people, around 158,000 individuals, don’t know they have the virus. That gap matters because people who are unaware of their status can’t start treatment and are more likely to transmit HIV to others.
New Infections and Deaths Each Year
An estimated 1.3 million people worldwide acquired HIV in 2024. Of those, about 1.2 million were adults and 120,000 were children. New infections in children typically happen during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding when the mother’s virus isn’t adequately suppressed.
That same year, 630,000 people died from HIV-related causes globally. Children accounted for 75,000 of those deaths, while adults made up the remaining 550,000. These numbers, while still substantial, represent a steep decline from the peak of the epidemic in the early 2000s, when annual deaths exceeded 2 million.
How Many People Are on Treatment
At the end of 2024, 77% of people living with HIV were receiving antiretroviral therapy. This treatment doesn’t cure the virus, but it suppresses it to the point where a person can live a normal lifespan and, in most cases, cannot transmit HIV to others. The concept is sometimes described as “undetectable equals untransmittable,” meaning someone whose viral load is consistently suppressed through treatment poses effectively zero risk of sexual transmission.
That still leaves roughly 23% of people living with HIV without access to treatment. Barriers include lack of diagnosis, cost, stigma, and limited healthcare infrastructure, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Southeast Asia where the need is greatest.
Who Is Most Affected
HIV does not affect all populations equally. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to roughly two-thirds of all people living with HIV despite having only about 14% of the world’s population. Within that region, young women and adolescent girls face disproportionately high infection rates due to a combination of biological vulnerability, gender inequality, and limited access to prevention tools.
Globally, certain groups face elevated risk regardless of geography. Men who have sex with men, transgender women, people who inject drugs, sex workers, and incarcerated populations all experience higher rates of HIV than the general population. These disparities are driven largely by social and structural factors, including criminalization, discrimination, and uneven access to healthcare, rather than inherent biological differences.
Children remain a vulnerable group as well. The 1.4 million children living with HIV worldwide are less likely than adults to be diagnosed and treated. In 2024, children made up a disproportionate share of HIV-related deaths relative to their share of total infections, reflecting gaps in pediatric testing and treatment access.