The overall growth of the global AIDS epidemic appears to have stabilized. The annual number of new HIV infections has been steadily declining since the late 1990s and there are fewer AIDS-related deaths due to the significant scale up of antiretroviral therapy over the past few years. Although the number of new infections has been falling, levels of new infections overall are still high, and with significant reductions in mortality the number of people living with HIV worldwide has increased.

In 2010 report on the global AIDS epidemic, the UNAIDS estimates that 33,300,000 people around the world currently live with HIV. Comparison with the estimates of 28,600,000 people living with HIV, made in the 2001 report, gives an indication on the epidemic’s growth. Unfortunately, the Central Asia and Eastern Europe regions, which include Bosnia and Herzegovina, continue to have the biggest regional increase in the HIV prevalence in the world.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is among countries with low epidemic level, which means that the HIV infection rate in the general population is below 1%, that is, below 5% in any of the increased-risk groups (men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, female sex workers, etc.).
From 1986, when the first case of HIV infection was documented in BiH, until the end of 2010, 170 persons diagnosed with HIV infection were registered in BiH. AIDS developed in 109 of them.

Of the total number of registered persons, the largest number of them were infected through heterosexual intercourse (57%), followed by homosexual intercourse (17%) and injecting drug users (12.7%).