July 19, 2010VIENNA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Governments in Eastern Europe and Central Asia need to reach out to street children and mothers infected with the AIDS virus if the region's epidemic -- the fastest growing in the world -- is to be reversed, a United Nations report said Monday.
Some 1.5 million people in the region are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, the UN children's fund, UNICEF, said in a report released at the 18th International AIDS Conference in Vienna.
Governments should stop stigmatizing children and others with HIV and instead implement preventive programs in the region based on an approach of "inclusion and solidarity," UNICEF said.
Such programmes should be aimed at street children and young people who engage in high-risk behaviour, such as drug use and prostitution, UNICEF said.
"Targeting the most at-risk adolescents and families with treatment and harm reduction "is key to reversing the epidemic," the UN agency said.
HIV is spreading faster in Eastern Europe and Central Europe than anywhere else in the world, and the region faces a dual epidemic of HIV infection and drug use.
Anthony Lake, UNICEF's executive director, said that it was "surprising and shameful" that the health-care systems in many of the region's countries drive people away from treatment or turn them over to law-enforcement authorities.
"It's unacceptable that for many of the children of the region, their childhood ends when they become infected with HIV, said Nina Ferencic, a co-author of the UNICEF report.
Recent data suggests that close to 40 per cent street children aged between 15 and 19 in the Russian city of St Petersburg are infected with HIV, according to the report.
The region has the highest rates of family separation in the world. In Russia and Ukraine about 6 per cent of children born to HIV-positive mothers are abandoned in maternity wards, paediatric hospitals and residential institutions.
Some 1.5 million people in Eastern Europe and Central Asia are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
Ukraine has the highest reported rate of adult HIV infection in Europe, at 1.6 per cent. That country, together with Russia, accounts for 90 per cent of the region's total infections.
Copyright 2010 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
