Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Hanoi (Fides Service) - One billion children and young people in Asia are at high risk for AIDS contagion. This emerged during a meeting on AIDS and Children held in Hanoi organised by UNICEF and UNAIDS and Vietnam.
The facts are alarming: 50% of Asians infected by AIDS in 2005 were aged 14 to 24. Asia is the continent where HIV virus spreads most rapidly. Reports issued at the end of 2005 estimated that there are 30,000 HIV + children in S. E. Asia and 11,000 of these were infected last year. In the same area there are 450,000 AIDS orphans.
The meeting discussed measures to limit diffusion of AIDS among children and to help those already infected and AIDS orphans. The meeting, the first of its kind in the region, brought together over 200 delegates from 20 countries including 14 children directly or indirectly affected by the virus from Mongolia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.
The UN says that last year in Asia there were more than 300,000 HIV+ children, a third of them were infected in 2005.
According to a UNAIDS report in 2005 more than 8.3 million people in Asia were suffering from HIV/AIDS. In the same year the virus caused the death of 520,000 people and 1.1 million more people had become HIV+. Children are particularly exposed to this disease because of poverty, violence, human trafficking and dispersion of families in a region experiencing rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Before May a group of UN member countries will present a special UN Meeting on HIV/AIDS with a plan to fight the HIV/AIDS virus in Asia. (AP) (29/3/2006 Agenzia Fides; Righe:33; Parole:406)
