- A new global snapshot from UNICEF finds that the burden of HIV is falling disproportionately on adolescent girls and children in some areas of the world.
- Children are primarily becoming infected with HIV by contracting it from often adolescent-age mothers, who have acquired the disease as a result of multiple intertwining factors.
- Children and adolescents aged 19 years and under account for just 7% of those with HIV, but they make up 15% of those who die from AIDS-related disease.
Overall, the incidence of HIV has fallen from what it once was globally. However, a new and troubling “global snapshot” from UNICEF finds that, for adolescent girls and children in many areas, the crisis persists.
It accounts for the deaths of 99,000 adolescent girls and children from causes related to AIDS, or stage 3 HIV — the most advanced and severe stage of infection with this virus — in 2022.
Particularly affected are adolescent girls and children from birth to 19 years in Eastern and Southern Africa. The areas next most affected are West and Central Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia.
“It is unacceptable that adolescent girls, who should be planning their futures, continue to bear the heaviest burden of HIV infection.”
— Anurita Bains, UNICEF associate director of HIV/AIDS, in a press release
In the affected areas, treatment for younger people falls far behind the options available to adults. Although the 0–19 years age group comprises just 7% of those living with AIDS, they account for 15% of all deaths from the disease.
The report also notes a lack of age-appropriate antiretroviral medication for people in this age group, although this may be changing.
In lower- and middle-income nations, a lack of standardized and readily available testing is hampering attempts to address the crisis. UNICEF also describes a cumbersome diagnostic process for the young as holding back efforts to help those infected with HIV.
UNICEF says this…
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