Today is World AIDS Day.  Since so many other LGBT sites are ably covering how HIV/AIDS impacts the LGBT community, I want instead to highlight once again some recent statistics about HIV/AIDS and children. There has been a drop in new infections over the last few years, but even so, the numbers are still sobering.
According to the latest UNAIDS estimates (via Avert):
- More than 1,000 children are newly infected with HIV every day. More than half of them will die as a result of AIDS because of a lack of access to HIV treatment.
- An estimated 330,000 children became newly infected with HIV in 2011, a 24 percent drop in new infections since 2009.
- At the end of 2011, there were 3.3 million children [defined as those under 15 years of age]Â living with HIV around the world.
- Of the 1.7 Â million people who died of AIDS in 2011, 230,000, or about one in seven, were children.
- Nine out of ten children infected with HIV were infected through their mother either during pregnancy, labor and delivery, or breastfeeding. Antiretroviral prophylaxis has prevented such transmission in 409,000 children in low- and middle- income countries between 2009-2011. Funding, trained staff, and resources could thus help prevent many infections and deaths among children.
- 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.
There are many ways to help; supporting UNICEF programs is one.
