Fighting HIV/AIDS in Asia-Pacific region must focus on children – UNICEF
With HIV and AIDS spreading at a faster rate in East Asia than almost anywhere else in the world, children must be at
the centre of a dramatically scaled up response, a United Nations official told the opening session of the first high
level regional meeting focusing on children and AIDS today.
“For the most part, children remain off the radar screen when we measure the risk and impact of HIV and AIDS,” the
Regional Director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for East Asia and the Pacific, Anupama Rao, said in Hanoi, Vietnam.
“This is no longer acceptable. We have an opportunity now to change the status quo for children by vastly accelerating
our response, and we must seize it.”
HIV and AIDS have caused immense suffering for children in East Asia and the Pacific. By the end of last year, an
estimated 450,000 children had lost one or both parents to AIDS, while hundreds of thousands more were living with a
chronically ill or dying parent.
More than 30,000 children were living with HIV or AIDS, nearly 11,000 of them newly infected last year. Millions more
children and young people in the region are at high risk of HIV infection or suffer from stigma and discrimination.
Experts say the true extent of the region’s epidemic is likely understated. The lack of good quality and consistent data
on children and young people greatly hinders East Asia’s response to epidemic. Currently, only a few countries in the
region collect such data, and rarely break it down by area.
The three-day meeting, the East Asia and Pacific Regional Consultation on Children and AIDS, which brings together over
200 delegates from governments, civil society, UN agencies and donors, presents an opportunity to agree to urgently
needed actions to stem the spread and mitigate the impact of HIV and AIDS among children and young people.
Prevention is the key to warding off a generalized epidemic across the region that would affect many more millions of
children, but success in prevention is contingent on aggressive efforts to combat pervasive stigma and discrimination
and in overcoming a host of other barriers, UNICEF said.
These include religious and cultural taboos which deter parents and educators from addressing topics such as safe sex
and condom use, limited financial resources for prevention, and inadequate information and education about the disease.
A recent survey of young people conducted by Save the Children, an independent organization, in six countries in the
region, revealed that while many children and young people have basic access to HIV/AIDS information, that information
is often inadequate and ineffective. Further, many of the most vulnerable of children say that they do not have access
HIV prevention services.