Many of us have heard of an epidemic: when a disease becomes widespread and effects a large amount of people. However, not as many of us are familiar with a pandemic. A pandemic is a disease that spreads throughout an entire country, continent, or the world. One way to think of it is as an epidemic over a larger amount of space. (source - dictionary.com). The AIDS pandemic has affected every single country on our planet, though in differing ways and to varying degrees.
Take a moment to pray for one of the regions of the world found on the maps above. Spend time praying for healing, spiritually and physically, of the people facing HIV in that region.
The sites below offer a variety of visual representations of HIV around the world. However, some sites statistics have not yet been adjusted to the latest research that came out in this year's UNAIDS reports. Prior to last week, there was believed to be over 40 million people currently infected with AIDS. Thanks to new data collection methods, this number has been scaled back to just over 33 million. Bear this in mind when using these resources.
The UNFPA has created a page of various resources, including an AIDS clock and a map showing estimates of the number of people infected in each country. It also has a scalable feature that allows the map to be sized proportionally to the number of AIDS infections.
In May of 2006, PBS' Frontline produced a special 4 hour documentary on AIDS. As part of their program, they created a variety of web resources including an interactive map with country profiles.
A map of the US by Frontline providing state by state breakdowns.
A variety of charts showing the affects on population, the spread by regions in Africa, the number of deaths, and much more.
A very detailed and interactive map providing country by country breakdowns of the scope of the pandemic in the continent of Africa. Provided by DATA (debt, AIDS, trade, africa), an advocacy organization dedicated to eradicating extreme poverty and AIDS in Africa.
