As HIV-related deaths among young people rise, so does the need for youth HIV advocacy in Asia
Adolescents are the only group of people living with HIV with a rising mortality rate. A youth advocacy programme initiated by amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, seeks to mobilise HIV-positive youth across the region
More than 30 years into the HIV and Aids pandemic, it remains one of the most serious challenges to global public health. Progress, however, has been made: being HIV-positive is no longer a death sentence as treatments have been developed so that patients can now live as long a life as a normal person.
But this progress is not being felt across the board. Adolescents aged 10 to 19 years are the only group of people living with HIV with a rising mortality rate, according to the World Health Organisation. HIV is now the second leading cause of death among adolescents worldwide.
Ahead of amfAR’s (The Foundation for AIDS Research) second fundraising gala dinner in Hong Kong on March 19, amfAR vice-president Dr Annette Sohn highlights “very concerning statistics” from a United Nations analysis: adolescent HIV-related deaths in the Asia-Pacific region have increased by 110 per cent since 2005, while the death rates in adults have fallen by 28 per cent.
“So how do you reconcile our improved control of HIV as a public health problem among adults, when young people are dying from this infection even though we’re telling them it’s a controllable disease, that if they take their medication they can live as long as people who don’t have HIV?” questions Sohn, a paediatrician and the Bangkok-based director of amfAR’s Treat Asia ((Therapeutics Research, Education, and Aids Training in Asia)) initiative.
“We’ve been living with the HIV epidemic for 30-odd years now, yet attention to young people has been limited. We don’t have a handle at all on why we cannot control their mortality rates.”