HIV Risk Prevention: Educating Minority Adolescents

Fighting HIV / AIDS involves no less than changing our whole sexual culture." Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS, feels that what is most vital is that preventive education be stressed into young people's behavior. (UNESCO Courier, October 1999). Around half of all new cases of HIV infection in the whole world involve young people between 15 and 24, and in more and more cases, below age 15. Why is this so? Because everybody knows that it is the age when you begin experimenting with sex and change partners most often which compounds the problem because it multiplies the risk of infection. Studies in Kenya and Zambia show that 23% of the girls between 15 and 19 are HIV-positive compared with only three to four percent of boys. Girls are more vulnerable because of two reasons: the female genitals are more susceptible to infection...
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