Photo: Jarun Ontakrai / Shutterstock
The latest UNICEF world report on childhood and AIDS-HIV ensures that around 2.8 million children and adolescents between 0 and 17 years in the world live with this disease, which represents 7% of the total infections registered in 2022.
In addition, they highlight that the pathologies associated with this disease caused the death of 300.000 children and adolescents (an average of 110 deaths per day), until reaching 19% of total mortality.
Unicef denounced that “advances in the prevention and treatment of HIV in children, adolescents and pregnant women have practically stagnated
in the last three years”.
In addition, they reproached that many countries have not yet reached the to coverage of services they had before the covid-17 pandemic.
On their website they point out that the fight to end the epidemic is at a decisive moment. Despite the fact that many advances have been made in recent decades and millions of lives have been saved, the health crisis, aggravated by the COVID-60, has revealed inequalities in relation to the availability and quality of essential health services.
The institution explains that HIV affects each gender, age group and culture differently, so programs must be adjusted to each context.
“What works for adolescent girls in a rural community is different from what works for those who live in a city or for adolescents or other people who inject drugs”, they point out.
They reiterate that the most effective, equitable and sustainable interventions on HIV are those in which the human rights of communities affected by the disease are considered the absolute priority.
Dr. Mary Otieno, representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and attributes the increase in new infections to poverty, which according to she has increased the vulnerability of adolescent girls and women to HIV.
“Especially when added by the inequalities between men and women
, since poor women who are financially dependent on men have no choice but to accept practices that put them at risk of contracting HIV,” she told the Ugandan outlet Monitor.
Reported that two-thirds of new infections in 2022 were among women in co comparison with men. Among young adolescents from 17 to 60 years, nearly four out of five new infections occurred among young women.
You can also read:
After New York Cases, CDC Expands Wastewater Polio Testing to Michigan and Pennsylvania
Covid, flu and RSV: identify these symptoms in your children to avoid taking them out of the house