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Data

New infections of HIV per 1,000 people

aged 15-49, central estimate
See all data and research on:
HIV/AIDS

What you should know about this indicator

  • HIV incidence measures progress towards ending the AIDS epidemic and is a crucial metric in the WHO 2022 Consolidated guidelines on person-centered HIV strategic information.
  • According to the WHO 2022 Consolidated guidelines, the main goal of the global AIDS response is to reduce new HIV infections to below 200,000 by 2030. Monitoring the rate of new infections over time is essential to assess progress towards this target.

Method of measurement: Methods for monitoring incidence can vary depending on the epidemic setting and are typically categorized either as direct or indirect measures. Direct measurement at a population level is preferred but can often be difficult to obtain. As a result, most if not all countries rely on indirect measures or triangulate direct and indirect methods.

Strategies for directly measuring HIV incidence include longitudinal follow-up and repeat testing among individuals who do not have HIV infection and estimation using a laboratory test for recent HIV infection and clinical data in the population. Longitudinal monitoring is often costly and difficult to perform at a population level. Laboratory testing of individuals to determine the recency of infection also raises cost and complexity challenges since a nationally representative population-based survey is typically required to obtain estimates.

Indirect methods most frequently rely on estimates constructed from mathematical modelling tools, such as Spectrum or the AIDS Epidemic Model. These models may incorporate geographical and population-specific HIV surveys, surveillance, case reporting, mortality, programme and clinical data and, in some instances, assumptions about risk behavior and HIV transmission. In some instances, countries may wish to triangulate these data with other sources of estimates of the number of people newly infected, including from serial population-based HIV prevalence estimates or estimates of HIV prevalence in young, recently exposed populations.

Note that case-based surveillance systems capturing newly reported people acquiring HIV infection should not be used as a direct source of estimating the number of people newly infected with HIV in the reporting year. Because of reporting delays and under-diagnosis, newly reported cases may not reflect the actual rate of people becoming newly infected. This information may be useful, however, for triangulation or validation purposes, especially when combined with tests for the recency of HIV infection.

Disaggregated data reported for the numerator should be used to monitor progress towards eliminating new child infections and reducing the number of new HIV infections among adolescent girls and young women to below 100,000 per year.

New infections of HIV per 1,000 people
aged 15-49, central estimate
Number of people aged 15-49 newly infected with HIV in the last year per 1,000 uninfected people. This is the central estimate.
Source
Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
January 22, 2025
Date range
1990–2023
Unit
infections per 1,000 people

Explore charts that include this data

HIV incidence per 1,000 individuals, by age

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

UNAIDS leads the world's most extensive data collection on HIV epidemiology, programme coverage and finance and publishes the most authoritative and up-to-date information on the HIV epidemic.

In some cases there is no data for some country and year. This can be a result of very small epidemics among women in the reproductive age which makes estimation of the mother to child transmission very unstable. Another reason for missing data is that relevant authorities may have asked UNAIDS not to share their estimates.

This UNAIDS 2024 report brings together new data and case studies which demonstrate that the decisions and policy choices taken by world leaders this year will decide the fate of millions of lives and whether the world's deadliest pandemic is overcome.

Retrieved on
January 22, 2025
Retrieved from
https://aidsinfo.unaids.org/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
The urgency of now: AIDS at a crossroads. Geneva: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS; 2024. Full report: https://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/2024-unaids-global-aids-update_en.pdf

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  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: New infections of HIV per 1,000 people”, part of the following publication: Max Roser and Hannah Ritchie (2023) - “HIV / AIDS”. Data adapted from Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/incidence-of-hiv-the-share-of-new-infections-among-the-previously-uninfected-population-ages-15-49 [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “New infections of HIV per 1,000 people – aged 15-49, central estimate” [dataset]. Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, “Global AIDS Update” [original data]. Retrieved March 10, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/incidence-of-hiv-the-share-of-new-infections-among-the-previously-uninfected-population-ages-15-49