At the peak of the HIV epidemic, AIDS caused more than half of all deaths in some countries

The HIV epidemic — which started in the early 1980s and continued into the 1990s — has had lasting impacts that continue today. Almost one million people still die from HIV/AIDS every year globally.

However, some countries were hit much harder than others.

In the chart, you can see the share of all deaths in a given year that were caused by HIV/AIDS in four countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that were badly affected.

At the height of the epidemic, more than half of all deaths in Zimbabwe and Botswana and almost 40% in South Africa and Namibia were caused by the disease.

Thankfully, interventions to prevent the spread of HIV and treatments such as antiretroviral therapy have reduced death rates across the world. But more than one in ten deaths in these countries are still caused by AIDS today.

Read our article on antiretroviral therapy and the millions of lives it has saved →

Where this page came from

This page was imported from Our World in Data. “At the peak of the HIV epidemic, AIDS caused more than half of all deaths in some countries” by Hannah Ritchie, published by Our World in Data under CC BY 4.0. Changed here: set as a page, its interactive charts shown as pictures. Data from third parties keeps its own licence.

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