The global HIV epidemic is growing, with an estimated 39.5 million people worldwide infected with the deadly virus, the United Nations said Tuesday.

AIDS has claimed 2.9 million lives this year and another 4.3 million people became infected with HIV, according to the UN's AIDS epidemic update report published on Tuesday. Spread of the disease was most noticeable in East Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since the first case was reported in 1981, making it one of the most destructive illnesses in history.

"In a short quarter of a century AIDS has drastically changed our world," UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said at a staff meeting Monday in Geneva. "AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria make up the deadliest triad the world has known."

But he said improvement in treatment, more resources and higher political commitment over the past 10 years give rise to optimism.

Prevention work ramains undone

The joint report by UNAIDS and the World Health Organization acknowledged that access to HIV/AIDS treatment has made a great leap forward in recent years, enabling many infected people to live longer. But it said much remained to be done, especially in prevention.

Sub-Saharan Africa — with 63 per cent or 24.7 million of the world's infected people — bears the highest burden, but in East Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia there are 21 per cent more people living with HIV than two years ago.

The virus spread fastest in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, with a nearly 70 per cent increase in new infections over the past two years. In South and Southeast Asia, the number of new infections has grown by 15 per cent since 2004, while it rose by 12 per cent in North Africa and the Middle East. In Latin America, the Caribbean and North America it remained roughly stable.

All regions of the world have had an increase in the number of people living with the deadly virus over the past two years, the report said. In some countries this was due to better access to medicine keeping people alive longer.

Never before have so many women been infected with HIV. There are 17.7 million women worldwide carrying the virus, an increase of more than one million compared with two years earlier. The proportion of women among the infected is particularly striking in sub-Saharan Africa where they account for 59 per cent of the people with HIV/AIDS.

The report doesn't break down the estimates country by country, but it said the United States — for which figures were available for 2005 only — had 1.2 million people living with HIV last year. The United States therefore ranks among the top 10 countries in terms of infected people.

Unprotected sex in prostitution and between men as well as unsafe injection drug use represent the highest risks for HIV infection and the main reasons for the spread of the disease in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, it said.

After sub-Saharan Africa, Asia is the second-most infected region. Almost eight million people with HIV/AIDS live in South and Southeast Asia.

The report said there is increasing evidence of HIV outbreaks among men who have sex with each other in Cambodia, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand, but it said few of these countries' AIDS programs really address the problem of sex between males.

Aboriginal people over-represented in Canada

In North America, an estimated 1.4 million people are infected, which represents a steady increase over the past few years mainly due to the life-prolonging impact of antiretroviral drugs.

In Canada, an estimated 58,000 people were living with HIV in 2005, an increase of 16 per cent over the 2002 estimate of 50,000, the report said.

Men who have sex with men comprised almost half, 46 per cent, of new infections, making them the most affected group in Canada, followed by injection drug users at 19 per cent.

Aboriginal people continued to be over-represented in Canada's epidemic, with the HIV infection rate among Aboriginal persons almost three times higher than for non-Aboriginals, according to the report.