New York (dpa) - Taking stock of the global anti-AIDS campaign
since 2005, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said Thursday that the
number of countries providing treatment for HIV-positive children and
pregnant women has doubled in one year.
By the end of 2006, 21 countries offered treatment, up from 11
countries the previous year, a combined report from UNICEF, the World
Health Organization and the UN-AIDS programme said. It warned that
there is still a long way to go to reach the goal of halting the
spread of AIDS by 2015.
Halting the spread of the deadly disease is one of the eight
Millennium Development Goals adopted by the UN General Assembly in
2000. Among the other targets: the UN hopes that universal primary
education will be provided to all children, and maternal and child
mortality and poverty and hunger would be ended by 2015.
The report said Benin, Botswana, Brazil, Namibia, Rwanda, South
African and Thailand - among the 21 countries in 2006 - were on track
for 80 per cent of the public to have access to programmes that
prevent HIV transmission from mothers to children, provide pediatric
treatment, prevent infection among adolescents and young people, and
protect and support children affected by AIDS.
It said that anti-retroviral treatment given to HIV-positive
children in low- and middle-income countries increased by 70 per cent
from 2005 to 2006.
"Today's children and young people have never known a world free
of AIDS," UNICEF director Ann Veneman said in presenting the report.
The report said an estimated 290,000 children under 15 died from
AIDS in 2007 and more than 12 million children in sub-Saharan
countries lost one or both parents to AIDS.
Most of the estimated HIV-positive 2.1 million children under 15
in 2007 were infected before birth, during delivery or breastfeeding,
the report said.
Copyright 2008 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH