HIV/Aids & the Youth
Posted by dds3 on May 22, 2009
AIDS was first discovered over 25 years ago. Yet today, 6,800 people will be infected with HIV. Of the 2.5 million people infected yearly, young people ages 15-24 account for 40 percent of new infections. Poverty, unemployment, a lack of education, sexual violence and gender inequality increase the vulnerability of young people to HIV infection.
11.4 million children and adolescents have been orphaned by AIDS and are now heads of households, as we lose an entire generation of parents, teachers, workers and doctors in many regions. Although world leaders committed that by 2005, 90% of young people would know how to protect themselves from infection, currently in the hardest hit countries, currently less than 40% of young men and less than 36% of young women can correctly identify how to prevent HIV.
Despite the debilitating effects of AIDS, young leaders are taking action in their communities to prevent the spread of the disease and to address the devastating consequences of the pandemic. In fact, evidence shows that young people are most effective at changing the risk behaviors of their peers and at shaping a better future for themselves and their families.
The Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS (GYCA) recognizes the potential of young leaders as the best force to address AIDS in their own communities, and empowers them with the knowledge, skills, resources and opportunities they need to scale up and expand their initiatives. GYCA links young leaders to mentors, funders, scholarships, information, training resources, and political advocacy opportunities to ensure that HIV interventions for young people are relevant and successful
Young people, like adults, contract HIV primarily in three ways—through men and women having sex, through men having sex with men, and through intravenous drug injecting (158). Having other sexually transmitted infections can increase the odds of contracting HIV/AIDS during sex with an infected person from two- to eightfold (96, 126, 148, 173).
HIV can also be transmitted from a woman to her baby, during pregnancy, birth, or through breastfeeding (see HIV Transmission from Mother to Child). While the first generation of babies infected by mother-to-child transmission would now be adolescents, the proportion of such infants still living is probably small (274).
Other means of transmission account for only a small proportion of infections. These include transfusion with infected blood and activities that can break the skin with unsterilized equipment (359).
