The Ledger · Entry 12
Annual AIDS deaths have fallen by more than two-thirds since their peak
Estimated annual deaths from HIV/AIDS worldwide
Data: Our World in Data, based on the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)
At the height of the epidemic, an HIV diagnosis was close to a death sentence, and the annual toll climbed year after year into the millions. The virus was killing faster than the world could respond.
The key rows
From the record
Since then, the annual number of deaths from AIDS has declined and since halved.
Then antiretroviral therapy reached the people who needed it, on a scale no one had managed before, and turned HIV into a condition people live with rather than die from. Deaths have fallen every year since the peak.
Asked often
When did AIDS deaths peak?
Global annual deaths from HIV/AIDS peaked in 2004 at 2,113,223, according to UNAIDS estimates, and have declined every year since.
How many people die of AIDS now?
By 2024 the estimate had fallen to 627,811 deaths, more than two-thirds below the 2004 peak.
Why did AIDS deaths fall so much?
The global rollout of antiretroviral therapy from the mid-2000s onward turned HIV from a near-certain death sentence into a manageable long-term condition for millions of people.
The world also got better today.
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