BEIJING, Nov. 21 (Xinhuanet) --The global HIV epidemic is growing, leaving an estimated 39.5 million people worldwide infected with the deadly virus, a United Nations report said in Geneva Tuesday.

    Nearly 40 million adults and children are infected worldwide and the most striking increases in new cases have been in east Asia, eastern Europe and central Asia, mainly due to drug use and unsafe sex, the UN's AIDS epidemic updated report said.

    Sub-Saharan Africa still bears the brunt of the AIDS scourge, with 24.7 million or nearly two-thirds of people living with HIV globally, according to the report.

    "In the past two years, the number of people living with HIV increased in every region in the world," said the report which largely drew comparisons with adjusted figures for 2004 rather than 2005, due to changes in methodology and data.

    Of the 2.9 million global deaths from AIDS last year, 2.1 million occurred in Africa, heart of the 25-year-old epidemic.

    Some 4.3 million people across the globe became infected with HIV this year, with a heavy concentration among young people, bringing the total number of people with the killer disease to an estimated 39.5 million. Africa recorded 2.8 million new infections this year.

    Life expectancy for women in Zimbabwe is now among the lowest in the world at 34 years, while for men it is 37 years.

    In Asia, an estimated 8.6 million people are living with HIV, an increase of nearly one million, and 630,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses in the vast region this year.

    "In a short quarter of a century AIDS has drastically changed our world," UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said at a staff meeting in Geneva.

     However, he said improvement in treatment, more resources and higher political commitment over the past 10 years gave rise to optimism.

    (Agencies)