About 0.7% of adults worldwide, roughly 1 in 140 people aged 15 to 49, are living with HIV. That global average, reported by UNAIDS, masks enormous variation by region, gender, and risk factors. Some communities face prevalence rates ten times higher, while others remain well below the global figure.
Global Prevalence at a Glance
HIV affects every region of the world, but the burden is far from equal. The 0.7% global adult prevalence translates to tens of millions of people living with the virus. Sub-Saharan Africa carries the heaviest load by a wide margin, home to roughly two-thirds of all people with HIV despite having only about 14% of the world’s population. In several southern African countries, adult prevalence exceeds 20%, meaning one in five adults is HIV-positive. By contrast, most of Western Europe, East Asia, and the Americas have prevalence rates well under 1%.
An estimated 1.4 million children under 15 are also living with HIV globally, the vast majority of whom acquired the virus from their mothers during pregnancy, birth, or breastfeeding.
Who Is Most Affected
Certain groups face significantly higher rates than the general population. UNAIDS data from 2020 through 2024 shows that gay men and other men who have sex with men have a median HIV prevalence of 7.6% across 80 reporting countries. People who inject drugs have a median prevalence of 7.1% across 64 countries, and sex workers face a median of 2.7% across 78 countries. These elevated rates are driven by a combination of biological risk factors, social marginalization, discrimination, and, in some places, criminalization that pushes people away from testing and treatment.
Gender also shapes the epidemic differently depending on where you look. Globally, women and girls account for a disproportionate share of new infections in sub-Saharan Africa, where young women are especially vulnerable. In the United States, the pattern flips: men accounted for 81% of the estimated 31,800 new HIV infections in 2022, while women accounted for 19%. Among American women newly diagnosed, Black and African American women made up 50% of cases, followed by white women at 24% and Hispanic/Latina women at 20%.
HIV in the United States
The U.S. sees roughly 32,000 new HIV infections per year. The epidemic here is concentrated among specific demographics. By age, people aged 25 to 34 had the largest number of new infections in 2022, at about 12,700 cases. Young people aged 13 to 24 accounted for 20% of all new infections that year, roughly 6,400 cases, a reminder that HIV continues to affect people early in adulthood.
Heterosexual contact accounted for 15% of new diagnoses among women, while injection drug use accounted for 3%. The majority of new diagnoses in men were linked to male-to-male sexual contact.
How Many People Know Their Status
One of the most important metrics in the HIV response is how many people living with the virus actually know they have it. As of 2024, the WHO estimates that 87% of people with HIV worldwide were aware of their status. That still leaves roughly 1 in 8 people with HIV undiagnosed, a gap that matters because people who don’t know they’re positive can’t start treatment and are more likely to transmit the virus to others.
The picture is worse for children. Only 63% of children living with HIV knew their status in 2024, and just 55% were receiving treatment. That treatment gap is one of the starkest inequities in the global HIV response, given that untreated HIV progresses faster and more dangerously in young children than in adults.
Children and Treatment Gaps
Of the 1.4 million children under 15 living with HIV worldwide, only about 760,000 were on antiretroviral therapy in 2024. That 55% treatment rate lags far behind the adult treatment rate, which exceeds 75% in most regions. Even among children who do receive treatment, only 47% had achieved viral suppression, meaning the virus was controlled to undetectable or near-undetectable levels in their blood. By comparison, viral suppression rates among treated adults are significantly higher. Closing this gap requires earlier diagnosis of infants born to HIV-positive mothers and pediatric drug formulations that are easier to administer in low-resource settings.
What 0.7% Actually Means
A global prevalence of 0.7% can sound reassuringly small, but context matters. That percentage represents real concentration in specific communities and regions. If you live in a country with very low prevalence, your personal risk profile depends far more on individual factors (sexual partners, condom use, access to prevention tools like PrEP, injection practices) than on the national average. If you live in a high-prevalence area, routine testing becomes even more important because the probability of encountering the virus in everyday sexual networks is substantially higher.
HIV is no longer the death sentence it was in the 1980s and 1990s. People diagnosed today who start and stay on treatment can expect a near-normal lifespan and will almost certainly not transmit the virus to sexual partners once their viral load is suppressed. The challenge is reaching the roughly 13% of people globally who still don’t know they carry the virus, and ensuring that children and marginalized populations get the same access to testing and treatment that has transformed outcomes for adults in wealthier countries.