Thirty-six million people worldwide have been infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and more than 21.8 million have died. Eighty-five percent of all AIDS deaths have occurred in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. In at least five of these countries, more than 20% of adults are HIV-positive. Infection rates are also climbing in parts of Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the former Soviet Union countries and Eastern Europe. Only a concerted global effort coordinated by WHO and led by the United States and other industrialized countries can stop this pandemic.

Through the Global AIDS Program (GAP), CDC is working with USAID and other DHHS agencies to assist ministries of health. In 2001, the program targeted 17 of the hardest-hit African countries (Angola, Botswana, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe), as well as India, Brazil, Cambodia, Guyana, Haiti, Thailand, and Vietnam. GAP’s mission is to implement the U.S. Leadership and Investment for Fighting an Epidemic (LIFE) Initiative, which is the U.S. contribution to the International Partnership Against AIDS in Africa and to AIDS efforts on other continents.

The goals of the Global AIDS program are to

• Reduce HIV transmission through primary prevention of sexual, mother-to-child, and bloodborne transmission

• Improve community and home-based care and treatment of HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, and opportunistic infections

• Strengthen national capacities to collect and use surveillance data and manage national HIV/AIDS programs.

Additional information on the Global AIDS Program is available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchstp/od/gap