 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| UNAIDS: "Young People are Leading the Prevention Revolution" |
 |
|
by Nicole Cheetham, Director, International Division As people from around the world, including Advocates for Youth staff and youth activists, begin to gather in Vienna at the International AIDS Conference, there is a new report just released from UNAIDS that includes a youth supplement. The new report is a completely different format from previous UNAIDS reports and focuses on all sorts of angles as it pertains to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It also puts forward “Treatment 2.0,” a new approach to simplify the way HIV treatment is currently provided and to scale up access to life saving medicines. While not part of the report itself, of major note is the youth supplement to the report that highlights that “Young people are leading the HIV prevention revolution.” HIV prevalence among youth is reported to have declined by more than 25% in 15 of the 25 countries most affected by AIDS. These declines are largely due to the falling new HIV infections among young people, it states. The countries where the significant HIV prevalence declines that have been accompanied by positive behavior change among youth include Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. UNAIDS concludes in its report: “UNAIDS has made empowering young people to protect themselves from HIV as a priority area. It calls on countries to implement a comprehensive set of programmes that put young people’s leadership at the centre of national responses, provide rights-based sexual and reproductive health education and services and empower young people to prevent sexual and other transmission of HIV infection among their peers. This can be achieved by ensuring access to HIV testing and prevention efforts with and for young people in the context of sexuality education. And by ensuring enabling legal environments, education and employment opportunities to reduce vulnerability to HIV.
So, for those skeptics who are claiming that youth programs don’t work and behavior change doesn’t happen, this helps show that this is no time to give up on international youth funding and programming for HIV prevention and sexual and reproductive health. And for those who appear to have given up on prevention all together, such as some of our friends at the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC), this data helps make the argument that HIV can be prevented---that is we can do prevention before young people become infected as opposed to “prevention” after they are already positive and are seeking services. As James Wagoner would say, young people are “the firewall” that can stop HIV, and as the Director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibe, is now saying, “Young people are leading the HIV prevention revolution.”
Press release:
Full report: http://data.unaids.org/pub/Outlook/2010/20100713_outlook_report_web_en.pdf
Supplement on youth! http://data.unaids.org/pub/Outlook/2010/20100713_outlook_youngpeople_en.pdf |
