In sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, the impact of HIV/AIDS on adolescents threatens to devastate entire communities, rolling back decades of development and progress. There are 11.8 million young people (15-24 of age) living with HIV/AIDS as of end 2001, of which 8.6 million in sub-Saharan Africa and 1.84 million in Asia. Among those HIV/AIDS affected young people, 7.3 million were women and 4.5 million men, indicating a greater risk faced by young women.

Furthermore,

• 500,000 children died of AIDS in 2000, bringing the total to 4.3 million who have died since the beginning of the pandemic.
  
• AIDS has orphaned at least 10.4 million children currently under 15 (that is, they have lost their mother or both parents to the epidemic).
  
• Half of all new infections – almost 6,000 daily – are occurring among young people under the age of 25.
  
• 2.5 million children at risk of HIV infection through mother-to-child transmission.
  
• Surveys in 20 developing countries reveal that over half of adolescents have never heard about AIDS or do not know that HIV cannot be transmitted through mosquitoes.

Sources: United Nations Children’s Fund and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), No Time to be Young in a World with AIDS, Poster, UNICEF and UNAIDS, New York, 2001; and UNAIDS and World Health Organization, AIDS Epidemic Update, WHO, Geneva, 2000.

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