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Summary: Over 10 million children from 60 countries worldwide will join a giant simultaneous lesson on HIV/AIDS this World AIDS Day, 1 December.
Over 10 million children from 60 countries worldwide will join a giant simultaneous lesson on HIV/AIDS this World AIDS Day, 1 December. Tens of thousands of schools and youth groups in countries from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe will participate in the Lesson for Life, learning about HIV/AIDS and mobilising children and their communities to work together to change the destiny of children affected by HIV and AIDS. Organised by the Global Movement for Children and the World AIDS Campaign, the Lesson for Life will involve some children urging their governments to take as much action on HIV/AIDS as children themselves are taking. ‘In the Lesson for Life, children from across the world will be tackling the HIV/AIDS crisis head on,’ said Miquel De Paladella, from the Global Movement for Children. ‘Our leaders must sit up and take notice of these children - their innovation and energy puts our governments to shame.’ In Zambia, children have been visiting ministers and will speak at a launch event to demand free treatment for their friends living with AIDS, in Vietnam children will quiz ministers in a live Q and A session and in France children from across Paris will meet for a giant lesson in UNESCO’s general assembly. Children are missing from global awareness, budgets, and action on HIV/AIDS, and do not have the services, care, support, and knowledge that they need. Fewer than 5 percent of HIV-positive children have access to treatment. Less than 10 percent of children who have lost parents to AIDS get public support or care. This July, G8 leaders made a commitment to AIDS treatment for all by 2010. But the funding commitments from these donors fall drastically short of what is needed to achieve this target. The $3.7bn pledged in September to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria is only half of the $7bn that is needed, and is not enough to start any new programmes in 2006 and 2007. Children in particular remain dangerously under-served. As long as they continue to be overlooked, the number of children infected, killed, orphaned and left vulnerable due to AIDS will continue to rise. ‘Empty promises cost lives,’ continued Miquel De Paladella. ‘Every year that governments fail to meet their commitments is another year that the millions of children affected by HIV/AIDS are without the care, support and treatment that are their need and their right.’International contact: Kate Norgrove, [email protected], +44 7813 164 160, +44 207 012 6860 For national contacts please see link above.