Girls Account For 80% of New HIV Infections in Africa -WHO

The World Health Organisation says girls account for nearly 80 percent of new HIV infections in Sub-Saharan Africa.The Director, Family and Reproductive Health Cluster, WHO Regional Office for Africa, Dr Felicitas Zawaira, said this in a statement issued in Abuja on Monday.
Zawaira said most recent data from the organisation showed that only 13 per cent of these adolescent girls and nine per cent of adolescent boys had been tested for HIV in the past 12 months in the region.
“In 2015, 250,000 adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19 were newly infected with HIV.
“Adolescents and young people are our future; we call them the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) generation.
“This is because they will be adults by the time we get to 2030. Unless we ensure that they grow up healthy and remain healthy, we are going to face incredible challenges down the road,” Zawaira said.
According to her, the involvement of adolescents themselves is also very important to the success of the intervention.