The reports shows that an estimated 39.5 million people worldwide are HIV positive. It goes on to say that the virus claimed 2.9 million lives this year and another 4.3 million people became infected with it.
According to the U.N.'s AIDS epidemic update report, published on Tuesday, the spread of the disease was most noticeable in East Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
UNAIDS and the World Health Organization said that sub-Saharan Africa still tops the list of AIDS infected people. With 24.7 million or nearly two-thirds of people living with HIV globally, one-third of all people with HIV globally live in southern Africa, and 34 per cent of all deaths due to Aids in 2006 occurred there.
However, some countries including Uganda are seeing a reduction of infection rates after having successfully reduced them.
The reports also said that the virus is at dangerous levels in China, which accounts for about half of the country's estimated 650,000 infections. It has reached "alarming proportions", the agencies said in a joint annual report, 2006 AIDS Epidemic Update.
"With HIV spreading gradually from most-at-risk populations to the general population, the number of HIV infections in women is growing too," the report said of China.
Additionally, AP quotes the report as saying that an estimated 1.4 million people are infected in North America, which represents a steady increase over the past few years mainly due to the life-prolonging impact of antiretroviral.
However, the case is different in the United States where the people from racial and ethnic minorities are more affected by HIV than others. Half of the AIDS diagnoses between 2001 and 2004 were among African Americans and 20 percent among Hispanics.
The report also concluded that HIV infected people in the U.S. have been benefiting from more modernized and effective treatment over the past few years, leading to a 21-percent increase of infected people surviving two years or longer since the early 1990s.
