GlobalHealthSince 1981Curatedhigh confidence

HIV and AIDS

A treatable pandemic that still kills hundreds of thousands a year because treatment reaches unevenly.

Severity score

49.5

Serious · default weighting

Trajectory

Improving

What this is

Roughly 40 million people live with HIV worldwide. Antiretroviral therapy has turned infection into a manageable condition for most who can access it, but coverage gaps in eastern and southern Africa, among key populations, and in conflict zones keep annual mortality high. Funding for the global response has plateaued while new infections fall more slowly than targets require.

Score breakdown

Loss of life

72

Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.

Lives negatively impacted

66

People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.

Financial cost

38

Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.

Environmental impact

5

Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.

Trajectory

30

Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.