Advocating for Effective Youth HIV Prevention Interventions
People between the ages of 10 and 24 make up a huge portion of the world's population – there are 1.7 billion of us! Young people are a diverse group, but we all have a lot in common with our peers around the globe. We are going to school, figuring out our roles in society as adults, thinking about raising families, or entering the work force.
Young people are contracting HIV, even though it is a preventable disease. In 2008, it is estimated that 5.5 million young people between the ages of 15 and 24 were living with HIV. UNAIDS, the United Nations (UN) co-sponsored programme that co-ordinates the UN's AIDS response, has estimated that over 45 percent of all new infections occur in young people in this age group (as of 2007, only 36% of young women and 40% of young men knew how to protect themselves from HIV infection). In addition, many young people who are not themselves infected with HIV (i.e. are HIV negative) are affected by the virus: they have lost parents, friends and lovers to the disease.
Although HIV was first reported over 27 years ago, the world has so far been unable to stop the disease from becoming a global epidemic. You may wonder: if HIV is preventable, why are so many of us becoming infected?