Today the AIDS crisis has reached a previously unthinkable scale. In the global Report UN AIDS 2006 it is stated that nearly 40 million people around the world carry the HIV virus (www.unaids.org). This is 50% more than was expected by the WHO in 1991. More than 3 million people died of AIDS-related illnesses in the year 2005, of which 500,000 were children. Since the outbreak of the epidemic at end of the 1970s over 25 million people have died of AIDS-related illnesses. Over 15 million children have become orphans because one or both of their parents have died.^{note 135}

In 2006 there is still no cure, but when people use medication every day life expectancy should be normal. It has become a chronic condition. However, drugs cost money and poor people cannot afford them. The social disruption caused by so many young people dying of AIDS, and so many children becoming orphans, only seems to be getting worse.
"I feel angry, I feel distressed, I feel helpless to live in a world where we have the means, we have the resources, to be able to help all these patients what is lacking is the political will.(Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, 2003)."note 136