ALMOST five million people were infected by HIV globally in 2005, the highest jump since the first reported case in 1981 and taking the number living with the virus to a record 40.3 million, the United Nations said yesterday.

The United Nations’ top HIV/Aids official says it is no longer realistic to hope that the world will meet its goal of halting and reversing the spread of the pandemic by 2015.

AROUND 4.8 million people, the most ever recorded in a single year, became infected with HIV in 2003, a UN agency said as it warned that Eastern Europe and Asia were just behind Africa as the plum targets for AIDS.

THE annual world death rate from Aids would wipe out the Irish population in a year and a half, a senior UN official warned yesterday.

The annual world death rate from AIDS would wipe out the population of Ireland in a year and a half, a senior UN official warned today.

FORTY million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS, including an estimated 2.5 million children under 15 years old.

A little-known South Korean tuberculosis expert was today elected to head the United Nations health agency.

THE number of people living with HIV/AIDS around the world is now well over 40 million, figures released yesterday reveal.

In another grim report on the evolution of the global Aids pandemic, experts estimated today that the number of children in the developing world orphaned by the disease will increase from 13.4 million today to 25 million in the next eight years.

HIV prevention organisations are to raise the worrying increase of the disease in Ireland with the head of UN-Aids.