Countries With the Highest HIV Infection Rate 2025

What this chart shows. The 25 countries with the most new HIV infections per 1,000 uninfected people in 2025. South Africa had 2.4 and Mozambique 2.3, against a world rate of 0.15. Fiji and Eswatini were tied at 1.9; Fiji, Suriname, Guyana, Belize and Antigua and Barbuda are the only countries outside the WHO African Region.

How the data is collected. This is the incidence rate used to track Sustainable Development Goal target 3.3, which calls for ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030. It divides the estimated number of new infections by the number of people who did not yet have HIV, so it compares countries of very different sizes on the same footing.

Background. The world rate halved from 0.31 in 2010. The steepest fall among these countries was in Eswatini, from 16.6 to 1.9, a drop of 88.6%. The rate went the other way in 4 countries, most sharply in Fiji, from 0.16 to 1.9, and in Madagascar, from 0.21 to 0.79.

Limits. In small countries a few hundred infections move the rate a lot, so the Caribbean and Pacific entries are less certain than the large African ones. Gambia and Antigua and Barbuda are tied at 0.47. The rate covers all ages, and the countries with no 2025 estimate listed under the other charts in this set are missing here too.