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AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, sometimes written Aids) is a human disease characterized by progressive destruction of the body's immune system. It is widely accepted that AIDS results from infection with HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), although this hypothesis is not without controversy. AIDS is currently considered incurable; where treatments are unavailable (mostly in poorer countries) most sufferers die within a few years of diagnosis. In developed countries, treatment has improved greatly over the past decade, and people have lived with AIDS for ten to twenty years.
It is estimated by the World Health Organization that as of the end of 2004 37.2 million adults and 2.2 million children were living with HIV. During 2004, 4.9 million people contracted HIV and 3.1 million died from AIDS. Since 1981, AIDS has killed 23.1 million people, out of 79.9 million total infections. In Africa, life expectancy has dropped by decades in many countries solely due to deaths from AIDS and Kaposi's sarcoma, a tumour occurring in AIDS patients that is now the most common tumour reported in sub-Saharan countries.
AIDS was first noticed among homosexual men and intravenous drug users in the 1980s. (See homosexuality and medical science.) By the 1990s the syndrome had become a global epidemic and in 2004, 58 percent of those with AIDS were women. While homosexual men continue to suffer higher per capita AIDS rates, the majority of victims are currently heterosexual women and men, and children, in developing countries.
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