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Regional Meeting on Children, HIV/AIDS Opens in Vietnam

Posted on: Wednesday, 22 March 2006, 09:01 CST

Regional meeting on children, HIV/AIDS opens in Vietnam

HANOI, March 22 (Xinhua) -- An East Asia and Pacific consultation meeting, the biggest ever gathering to center attention exclusively on the impact of HIV/AIDS on children in the region, kicked off here Wednesday.

"Our response for children now needs to be scaled up into national action plans and comprehensive HIV and AIDS programs. If not, we risk another generation, and a much large number of children, infected and affected needlessly by HIV and AIDS," UNICEF regional director Anupama Rao Singh said at the three-day consultation's opening ceremony.

In East Asia and the Pacific, the face of AIDS is becoming younger with the majority of new infections occurring among young people aged under 30, and the number of youths at risk is growing, she said, noting that children are still missing from the focus of priorities and response in the region.

The consultation is the first high-level meeting in the region to focus exclusively on the impact of HIV/AIDS on children, she said.

At the ceremony, Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Khiem said, "As the Hanoi Call to Action on Children and HIV/AIDS in East Asia and Pacific (which outlines responsibilities and details specific steps which governments and other partners must take to scale up services for children) is adopted at the consultation, it will be time for us, regardless of adults or children, status or background, to take urgent actions."

During the meeting, nearly 300 delegates, mainly health officials, experts, activists and representatives from 19 countries, including China, Malaysia, Laos and Papua New Guinea, and some 30 international agencies like the UNICEF (the United Nations Children's Fund) and the World Health Organization, will collectively strategize and commit to increased action for children vulnerable to, infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.

The delegates are to consider country-specific planning, increasing access to prevention, care, treatment and support, improving the evidence base, resource mobilization, and engendering compassion.

According to estimation of international health organizations, by the end of 2005, throughout East Asia and the Pacific, 31,000 children aged under 15 were living with HIV/AIDS, nearly 11,000 of whom were newly infected in the year, the UNICEF said.

Millions more children and young people in the region are at high risk of HIV infection or suffer from stigma and discrimination as a result of their association with a person living with HIV/AIDS or an affected family.

By late 2005, an estimated 450,000 children in East Asia and the Pacific had lost one or both parents to AIDS, while hundreds of thousands more were living with a chronically ill or dying parent, said the UNICEF.

The three-day consultation is jointly organized by the Vietnamese Commission for Population, Family and Children, Family Health International, Save the Children, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, UNICEF, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and the World Health Organization.

Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS

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