Children forgotten part of AIDS picture

The forgotten faces of the AIDS epidemic belong to children: infected, neglected, and orphaned by a disease that ravages not only their bodies, but also their families and communities, according to a gathering of international AIDS experts Monday (Sept. 24).

Though one out of six AIDS deaths globally is a child, children are less often targeted for intervention than adults. Support for children infected or orphaned by the disease most often comes from extended family members or from organizations within their community.

UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot called for more money, more data, and more activism on behalf of children. According to UNAIDS statistics, 2.3 million children were living with HIV worldwide in 2006 and more than 500,000 were newly infected that year.

Piot delivered the keynote address at a daylong symposium, “Meeting Children’s Needs in a World with HIV/AIDS,” at Harvard Medical School. The event brought together activists, practitioners and officials from around the world to discuss ways to improve the lot of children whose lives have been impacted by the disease.

The event was sponsored by the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS (JLICA), a broadly based collaborative that seeks to engage scientists, policymakers, activists, and community leaders to spur new ideas and design practical solutions for the HIV/AIDS crisis. JLICA’s secretariat is hosted by the Harvard School of Public Health’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights.