SOS Malta is calling for more prevention and awareness efforts on World AIDS Day today, an occasion which should remind people that HIV has not gone away and much more still has to be done.

The NGO noted that according to UNAIDs estimates, there were 33.4 million people living with HIV, including 2.1 million children.

In 2008, about 2.7 million people became newly infected with the virus and an estimated two million people died from AIDS. About half of all people infected with HIV do so before they are 25 and are killed by the disease before they are 35.

As it works to raise awareness about the Millennium Development Goal 5 – improving maternal health, SOS Malta said HIV was a threat to men, women and children on all continents around the world.

They quoted the message of Ebube Sylvia Taylor, an 11-year-old born free of HIV, to world leaders gathered in New York to share progress made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015: “No child should be born with HIV; no child should be an orphan because of HIV; no child should die due to lack of access to treatment.”