One of the main topics during last week’s World Youth Conference in Leon, Mexico

With an estimated 40% of new HIV infections occurring among people aged 15-24, a youth-centered approach to the AIDS response will be critical to meet Millenium Development Goal 6—halting and reversing the spread of HIV—and to ensure efforts are sustained in the long term.

More than 4.3 million young people worldwide are believed to be living with HIV, and a majority of them are unaware of their HIV status. Testing for HIV, together with quality pre- and post-test counselling and support, is needed. Yet most young people still have no access to sexual and reproductive health programmes that provide the information, skills, services, commodities, and social support they need to prevent HIV.

In order to move towards achieving the proposed goal, it is necessary to:

• Revitalise HIV prevention efforts, particularly in quality and scale, in order to reach young people more effectively for better results;
• Plan HIV prevention programmes to target relevant subgroups of young
  people within different epidemic scenarios;
• Support implementation of target-specific combination prevention
  (biomedical, behavioural and structural) programmes.

Despite challenges, there are signs of progress. A new study from UNAIDS has reported a more than 25% drop in HIV prevalence among young people in 15 countries heavily affected by the AIDS epidemic.

For more information please use the following links:
http://www.unaids.org/en/KnowledgeCentre/Resources/FeatureStories/archive/2010/20100827_FS_mexico_youth.asp
http://data.unaids.org/pub/BaseDocument/2010/20100826_business_case_en.pdf