See all coverage in our 2013 “Life, Positively” special section…
• Worldwide, more than 35 million people now live with HIV/AIDS — 3.3 million of them are under the age of 15.
• Every day nearly 6,300 people contract HIV — nearly 262 every hour.
• In 2012, 1.6 million people died from AIDS.
• Since the beginning of the epidemic, more than 75 million people have contracted HIV and nearly 36 million have died of HIV-related causes.
• In the U.S., about 1.1 million people are living with HIV/AIDS; 1.7 million Americans have been infected with HIV and more than 650,000 have died of AIDS.
• An estimated 50,000 new HIV infections occur in the U.S. each year.
• In the U.S., men who have sex with men (MSM) account for the majority of new HIV/AIDS diagnoses.
• In North Carolina, new HIV infections among MSM have risen each year in recent years. In 2008, 53 percent of all new HIV infections were among MSM. That rose to 54 percent in 2009, 56 percent in 2010 and 59 percent in 2011.
• In 2012, MSM accounted for 64 percent of new HIV infections in North Carolina.
• Mecklenburg County accounts for the highest new HIV infection rates in North Carolina.
• Young African-American MSM are at the highest risk of new HIV infections.
• Projections on HIV infection rates show that as much as 10 percent of current college-aged MSM are HIV-positive. In 30 years, as much as half of these men may be HIV-positive.
• In 2010 in the U.S., 31 percent of all new infections occurred among people aged 25–34, followed by individuals aged 13–24 at 26 percent.
— Some data compiled by and reprinted from The Charlotte Observer. qnotes is a member of The Observer’s Charlotte News Alliance. Matt Comer contributed.