Today marks World AIDS Day. HIV/AIDS continues to impact many people we know and many communities of which we are part. Since so many other LGBT sites are ably covering how it impacts the LGBT community, I want to do what I have done in previous years, and highlight some recent statistics about HIV/AIDS and children. The numbers, of course, don’t capture the personal stories—the parents who must watch their children die, and the children left orphaned—but the data is devastating in its own way.
According to 2010 UNAIDS estimates (via Avert):
- At the end of 2009, there were 2.5 million children [defined as those under 15 years of age] living with HIV around the world.
- An estimated 390,000 children became newly infected with HIV in 2010. [That’s 15 percent less than in 2001, but five percent more than in 2009.]
- Of the 1.8 million people who died of AIDS during 2009, one in seven were children. Every hour, around 30 children die as a result of AIDS.
- There are more than 16 million children under the age of 18 who have lost one or both parents to AIDS.
- Most children living with HIV/AIDS—almost 9 in 10—live in sub-Saharan Africa, the region of the world where AIDS has taken its greatest toll.
May today not be the only day we think of those affected, or try to do something to help them.