I am very pleased to welcome all of you who are here today, and all our staff in the Regional Offices who are watching on our video link, to this event to mark this year’s Worlds AIDS Day. I am especially pleased to welcome Winnie Mpanju-Shumbusho, the new Director of the WHO HIV Initiative, who joins us today.

There will come a World AIDS Day, hopefully in the not too distant future, when we can truly celebrate a breakthrough in the fight against AIDS. It could be a vaccine. It could be an effective and affordable treatment. It could be a combination with sound national policies and individual behavioural changes which will reverse the patterns of the present, of devastating growth curves of HIV infections in many countries today. It may not be very soon, but I am certain that the day will come.

In the meantime, there are also small victories. Amidst the dramatic figures that we released last week, such victories are apparent. Through far-sighted and courageous policies focusing on prevention among adolescents, several countries have been able to reduce HIV infection rates.

Some leaders speak out and demonstrate real leadership. Some countries have taken leadership in developing an HIV vaccine, and some have shown ingenuity in improving care and support for people living with AIDS. Some drugs have shown promise in reducing mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

WHO’s commitment to the global response to HIV/AIDS is unshakeable, in the broad area of prevention, from issues of blood safety and mother-to-child transmission, to the care of people living with HIV, and of course, the control of the dual epidemics of HIV and tuberculosis. We will push for the development of new drugs and wider access to drugs and eventually for the discovery of an effective and safe vaccine against HIV.

We have recognized the need to re-energize our efforts and focus our attention and to ensure that HIV/AIDS remains high on the international public health agenda. During the past year, we have established an increasingly focused agenda for our work on HIV/AIDS. The whole Organization is engaged.

As a Cosponsor of UNAIDS, WHO is helping to build the health sector capacity in countries to face the epidemic. National and international authorities and the donor community are renewing their commitment to face the real crisis developing particularly in southern African countries, where life expectancy may have been curtailed by as much as 10-15 years due to the impact of AIDS.

This year’s World AIDS Day is about children and young people.

In 1998, 2.5 million 15-24 year olds were newly infected with HIV, that is one out of two of all new infections globally. Of the nearly 34 million people living with HIV/AIDS, approximately one-third are young people.

Young people are at the centre of the HIV epidemic. It can only be contained – and reversed – if controlled among young people. It is young people who are the most vulnerable to infection and have the highest infection rates.

Many young people see their opportunity of growing up and entering adulthood in a safe and supportive environment shattered by AIDS. Young people take on the burden of caring for parents and siblings who live with HIV infection, often with the added responsibility of ensuring the economic survival of the family. Many young people will prematurely lose one or both of their parents to HIV/AIDS, in countries where no safety net exists for this new wave of orphans.

However, it is also young people who offer the greatest hope and force for change. Their involvement in action to ensure and improve their own access to information, skills, counselling and health services needs to be increasingly recognized and supported by governments and NGOs throughout the world.

Why do we focus on young people for this year’s World Aids Day?

Because adolescents are different from the rest of the population, both in their behaviour and in the way they respond to the risk. Adolescents experiment with new behaviour as part of normal development. Sometimes these behaviours put adolescents at higher risk.

Adolescents are vulnerable not only because they are more susceptible to a range of health and social problems but also because they may find it more difficult to seek help. Often health workers may be ill equipped to deal with their special needs.

We know that young girls are especially vulnerable to HIV infection, both for biological, cultural, social and economic reasons.

Sexual contacts often start before young people have the information and skills to protect themselves. A study from Brazil shows that 25% of adolescent girls reported first having sex before they were thirteen.

Poverty, urbanization, environmental degradation, discrimination and social unrest, all disproportionately affect young people – increasing stress at a critical time of their physical, emotional and social development. With increasing vulnerability comes increasing HIV risk, a grim picture indeed.

But young people also hold the key to slowing the epidemic. WHO is committed to reducing the vulnerability and risk of young people everywhere.

• Strategies are being developed to integrate voluntary testing and counselling into health services and other agencies targeting young people. WHO is supporting an initiative in several African countries where young people themselves are promoting HIV counselling and voluntary HIV testing among their peers.
• Six countries are testing the introduction in schools of youth-friendly services for reproductive health, combined with prevention and care for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.
• Rapid assessment and response methods have been developed for assessing and responding to injecting drug use, among especially vulnerable young people, and sexual risk behaviour associated with substance use. Training on these methods has been provided to individuals from over 50 countries, with workshops held in Brazil, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Switzerland and the USA.

A range of activities are carried out by governments, community groups and NGOs in close contact with young people. But the total sum of all efforts is not enough. We must do much more to protect young people and harness the potential they have to act as agents of change among their peers and young siblings.

The international community has set ambitious targets: To reduce HIV infections among young people by 25% in the most heavily infected countries by 2005, and by 25% globally by 2010.

WHO will increase its contribution towards reaching these targets – we cannot let young people’s future be marred by HIV. We count on them to rejuvenate our societies – and they need to be in good health – HIV free – to make their mark in the next millenium.