1 child every 100 seconds gets HIV – UNICEF

UNICEF reported that a child or a young person below 20 years old every minute and 40 seconds acquire HIV in 2019, bringing the total number of children with HIV to 2.8 million.

“Prevention efforts and treatment for children remain some of the lowest amongst key affected populations. In 2019, a little more than half of the children worldwide had access to life-saving treatment, significantly lagging behind coverage for both mothers (85 percent) and all adults living with HIV (62 percent). Nearly 110,000 children died of AIDS that year,” the report said.

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The pediatric antiretroviral treatment coverage is highest in the Middle East and North Africa, at 81 percent, followed by South Asia (76 percent), Eastern and Southern Africa (58 percent), East Asia and the Pacific (50 percent), Latin America and the Caribbean (46 percent) and West and Central Africa (32 percent).

“Even as the world struggles in the midst of an ongoing global pandemic, hundreds of thousands of children continue to suffer the ravages of the HIV epidemic,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. “There is still no HIV vaccine. Children are still getting infected at alarming rates, and they are still dying from AIDS. This was even before COVID-19 interrupted vital HIV treatment and prevention services, putting countless more lives at risk.”

UNICEF said the COVID-19 pandemic has further worsened difficulties in access to life-saving HIV services for children, adolescents, and pregnant mothers worldwide.

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1 child every 100 seconds gets HIV – UNICEF

Additional 2019 data included in the HIV report of UNICEF includes:

  • 150,000 children aged 0-9 years were newly infected with HIV, bringing the total number of children in this age group living with HIV to 1.1 million.
  • 170,000 adolescents aged 10-19 were newly infected with HIV, bringing the total number of adolescents living with HIV to 1.7 million.
  • 130,000 adolescent girls were newly infected with HIV in 2019, compared with 44,000 adolescent boys.
  • The total number of AIDS-related deaths of children and adolescents was 110,000; 79,000 aged 0-9 years and 34,000 aged 10-19.
  • Mothers’ access to antiretroviral therapy to prevent the transmission of the virus to their babies increased globally to 85 percent, and early infant diagnosis reached 60 percent.
  • The number of pregnant women living with HIV was 1.3 million; an estimated 82,000 children under the age of five were infected during pregnancy or birth, and 68,000 were infected during breastfeeding.