Around 40.8 million people worldwide are living with HIV as of 2024. That’s roughly 1 in every 200 people on the planet, though the virus is far more concentrated in certain regions and communities than others. Understanding how common HIV actually is requires looking beyond a single global number to where it spreads, who it affects most, and how the picture has changed over time.
Global Numbers in 2024
The 40.8 million figure from 2024 reflects decades of accumulated infections alongside major improvements in treatment that keep people alive far longer than in earlier eras of the epidemic. Of those 40.8 million, about 87% know their HIV status, meaning roughly 1 in 8 people living with the virus globally haven’t been diagnosed.
Deaths from HIV-related illness have dropped sharply. About 630,000 people died from HIV-related causes in 2024, which is 70% fewer than the peak year of 2004 and 54% fewer than in 2010. That decline happened even as populations grew substantially in many of the hardest-hit countries, a sign that treatment access has made a real difference.
Where HIV Is Most Concentrated
HIV is not evenly distributed across the globe. More than half of all people living with the virus, 21.1 million, live in eastern and southern Africa. Western and central Africa account for another 5.2 million, and the Asia-Pacific region has 6.9 million. Together, sub-Saharan Africa carries the vast majority of the global burden, with some countries in the region reporting adult prevalence rates above 10%.
In contrast, high-income countries in Western Europe, North America, and East Asia have much lower overall prevalence, though significant epidemics persist within specific communities in those regions.
HIV in the United States
In the U.S., about 13% of people living with HIV don’t know they’re infected. As of year-end 2022, that worked out to roughly 158,000 undiagnosed Americans. This matters because people who don’t know their status can’t get treatment and are more likely to transmit the virus to others.
HIV doesn’t affect all Americans equally. Black and African American people and Hispanic and Latino people made up about 70% of estimated new HIV infections in 2022, despite representing a much smaller share of the total U.S. population. These disparities reflect differences in access to healthcare, prevention tools, and testing rather than any biological difference in susceptibility.
Children Living With HIV
About 1.4 million children were living with HIV globally at the end of 2024, nearly all of them infected during pregnancy, birth, or breastfeeding. That number has dropped significantly from 2.7 million in 2010, thanks to expanded programs that give pregnant women antiretroviral treatment to prevent passing the virus to their babies. In countries with strong prevention programs, mother-to-child transmission has become rare.
Transmission Risk Per Exposure
One reason people search “how common is HIV” is to understand their personal risk. The probability of getting HIV from a single sexual encounter varies widely by the type of exposure. The CDC estimates the following per-act risks when no protective measures are used and one partner has HIV:
- Receptive anal sex: about 1 in 72 (the highest sexual risk)
- Insertive anal sex: about 1 in 909
- Receptive vaginal sex: about 1 in 1,250
- Insertive vaginal sex: about 1 in 2,500
These numbers represent averages across many studies and can shift substantially based on other factors. Having another sexually transmitted infection, for example, raises the risk. An HIV-positive partner who was recently infected and hasn’t started treatment carries a much higher viral load, which also increases transmission odds. On the other side, condoms, PrEP (a daily or on-demand preventive medication), and effective treatment of the HIV-positive partner can lower or completely eliminate the risk. A person on treatment who maintains an undetectable viral load has effectively zero chance of transmitting HIV sexually.
How the Numbers Have Changed
HIV is less deadly than it was a generation ago, but it hasn’t gone away. The 70% drop in annual deaths since 2004 is driven almost entirely by antiretroviral therapy, which transformed HIV from a death sentence into a manageable chronic condition for most people with access to medication. Life expectancy for someone diagnosed with HIV today and started on treatment promptly is close to that of the general population.
New infections have declined more slowly than deaths. Prevention tools like PrEP and expanded testing have helped, but progress has been uneven. Eastern and southern Africa has seen the largest declines in new cases, partly because that’s where the most intensive prevention campaigns have been focused. In some regions, including parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, new infections have actually risen in recent years due to gaps in prevention and stigma around testing.
The overall trend is one of cautious progress: fewer people are dying, more people know their status, and prevention options are more effective than ever. But with 40.8 million people currently living with HIV and hundreds of thousands of new infections each year, the virus remains one of the most significant infectious disease challenges worldwide.