While important progress has been made against the global incidence–prevalence ratio—which, while declining from 11.2% in 2000 to 6.6% in 2010 and to 4.6% in 2018, still leaves the world not on track to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030—the progress is uneven across regions.

Western and central Europe and North America, where treatment coverage is generally high and a comprehensive set of HIV prevention options is available to a large percentage of people at risk of HIV, had an incidence–prevalence ratio of 3.1% in 2018. Performance in other regions ranged from 3.9% in eastern and southern Africa, 4.6% in the Caribbean, 5.4% in both Latin America and Asia and the Pacific, 5.5% in western and central Africa, 8.0% in the Middle East and North Africa and 9.0% in eastern Europe and central Asia.