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Data Update—HIV/AIDS

January 28

Explore updated data on HIV/AIDS

When HIV was first identified four decades ago, nearly 100% of those infected died, typically within a few years.

Thankfully, global public health efforts and medical advances such as antiretroviral therapy (ART) have improved this situation dramatically.

Modern ART is very effective in both treating HIV and preventing the virus from spreading to others, such as between mothers and their children.

Nearly two million people's lives are now saved by ART each year, as the chart shows.

I’ve updated our charts with the latest release from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), allowing you to track the scale and impact of the disease globally, and how this has changed over the last decades.

Explore the updated data in our interactive charts
A chart showing the estimated annual number of deaths from HIV/AIDS and the estimated number of deaths averted by antiretroviral therapy (ART), from 1990 to 2024. ART is estimated to save over a million lives each year. The data source is the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (2026). The chart is licensed CC BY to Our World in Data.
Lucas Rodés-Guirao