Inter Press Service - Tuesday, December 1, 1998
Kenneth Blackman

Despite her youth, she fought back by educating her peers on the the dangers of the aquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and the related HIV virus. Now 14, Jamie has spent six years teaching others about the threats posed by HIV/AIDS since she went to live with her legal guardian, an AIDS educator.

"My father is living with AIDS," Jamie said Tuesday at an event held here to mark World Aids Day, celebrated each year on Dec. 1. "Mom died when I was seven, my uncle when I was six, my godfather when I was five."

"We have to get the message across to the youth," said the girl who has received two U.S. national awards for her work.

That is also the aim of 'Staying Alive', a documentary launched at Tuesday's event and produced jointly by the MTV television channel, the World Bank and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

UNAIDS is a joint programme co-sponsored by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the UN Development Programme, the UN Population Fund, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, the World Health Organisation and the World Bank.

The documentary, which featured the personal testimonies of six young people living with HIV in Brazil, India, the Netherlands, Ukraine, the United States and Zambia, aims to educate and inform young people around the world about HIV/AIDS.

This ties in with the focus of UNAIDS' World AIDS Campaign this year, which is being held under the theme: 'Young People, Force for Change'.

The "future course of the AIDS pandemic lies in the hands of young people", declared UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy.

President Bill Clinton, in a separate announcement, revealed the government was providing 10 million dollars in grants to developing nations for the care of AIDS orphans. The U.S. government also has set aside 200 million dollars for AIDS vaccine research in its fiscal 1999 budget, an increase of 47 million dollars over 1998.

Participants in Tuesday's event highlighted the need to involve young people in the AIDS fight. "It is absolutely vital that we do everything necessary to arm them with the knowledge they need to protect themselves and their communities," Bellamy said.

According to the UNAIDS 'Aids epidemic update' for December 1998, half of the 5.8 million people worldwide who were infected with HIV in 1998 were under the age of 25.

All told, 33.4 million people, including 1.2 million children under the age of 15, were living with HIV/AIDS, according to the UNAIDS ereport. It stated that an estimated 2.5 million persons - more than ever before in a single year - have died from AIDS in 1998, bringing total AIDS deaths since the start of the pandemic some two decades ago to 13.9 million.

These statistics were "just chilling in terms of the picture they paint," Bellamy said. HIV was "spreading like wildfire, threatening development as never before".

HIV/AIDS, she added, seemed "well on its way to wiping out the substantial reductions in child mortality that were achieved in the 1980s and in the first part of this decade...it seems all but certain to produce 40 million new orphans by early in the next century."

The Washington event also included a forum in which teenagers from two schools participated shot questions at a panel that included at least one person living with HIV, Bill Barnes (21), who is AIDS Policy Advisor to the Mayor of San Francisco.

Barnes said he tested positive for HIV when he was 15 years old. "It's not been a very fun ride," he said when asked about his experience. He added that in some circles in the United States, there was almost a certain mystique about HIV, as if it were "really glamorous sometimes to have HIV (but) it's not fun to be sick a lot, to wake up at night and have night sweat".

Another problem faced by people with HIV was the cost of new antiretroviral drugs - medicines that fight the symptoms of HIV and delay the onset of AIDS. They "are priced out of the stratosphere", Barnes said.

The annual cost of antiretroviral agents was between 12,000 and 20,000 dollars per person in the United States, which was high for the United States, especially for the many people not covered by health insurance, the forum heard.

Stemming the spread of HIV among young people is the thrust of this year's World Aids Campaign, initiatives such as 'Staying Alive' and the type of work that earned Jamie Morales her awards.

Over the years she has spoken to youths, trained other young AIDS educators, juvenile court workers, health workers and church groups, done voluntary fundraising for organisations that help people with AIDS and acted in plays on HIV issues.

For that she received the 1998 'Caring Counts' Award from Metropolitan Life Foundation and the National Aids Fund, as well as the 1997 Prudential Spirit of Community Award from Prudential Life, a life insurance company. (END/IPS/kb/mk/98)
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