Epidemiology

According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), some 1,800 people in Germany became infected with HIV in 2021. Slightly more than half of these infections were attributed to unprotected sex between men, about one-quarter to unprotected sex between men and women and about one in six infections to the shared use of syringes and needles for drug use.

Roughly 2,400 people were diagnosed with HIV in 2021; about one in three of these HIV diagnoses were made at a stage where the immune system had already been severely damaged and one in six even when AIDS symptoms were already present.

At the end of 2021, about 91,000 people in Germany were living with HIV – with about 9,000 being unaware of their infection.

According to UNAIDS, about 1.5 million people worldwide became infected with HIV in 2021. The primary route of transmission is unprotected sex between men and women. The groups particularly affected (to varying extents depending on the region) include girls and young women, sex workers, intravenous drug users, gay men and other men who have sex with men (MSM), trans* people and sexual partners of people from these groups.

At the end of 2021, a total of roughly 38 million people were living with HIV; about 650,000 people died from the consequences of AIDS in 2021.