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Living with HIV

Prevalence rates do not reflect the true impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The 15-49 year-old age group includes people who are not yet infected with HIV but who will be one day. It also excludes people who were infected with HIV but have already died. If the probability that a person will become infected at any time in his or her life is summed up, the cumulative figure is higher than the "snapshot" provided by current prevalence rates. To gain a clearer understanding of the actual risk of dying of HIV-associated disease, a research model which follows people throughout their lives, is used to examine their risk of HIV infection at each age (determined by the current phase of the HIV epidemic) and their risk of dying of other causes (determined by rates similar to those recorded before the HIV epidemic).

The lifetime risk of AIDS death for men from selected countries is illustrated in the graph.

The horizontal axis shows the current prevalence of HIV in adults aged 15-49, while the vertical axis shows the probability that a boy who is now 15 years-old will die of AIDS

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Clearly, the likelihood that a boy now aged 15 will eventually die of AIDS is much higher than the likelihood that a male now aged 15-49 is currently infected with HIV. The grey line reflects the relationship between current prevalence and the risk of a 15 year-old eventually dying of AIDS if infection rates remain at the current levels. The red line demonstrates the relationship if the risk for new HIV infection at each age drops by half over the next 15 years. Even if prevention campaigns are very successful and the risk of HIV is drastically reduced, the proportion of young people who will die of AIDS is appallingly high in many countries: in virtually any country where 15 per cent or more of all adults are currently infected with HIV, at least 35 per cent of boys now aged 15 will die of AIDS.