LONDON, July 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Britain’s Prince Harry has criticised the “absurd” lack education for young people on HIV, saying youngsters often don’t know about the virus until it is too late.
Harry, 32, who has become a prominent HIV and AIDS campaigner through his charity Sentebale set up in 2006 to help children in Africa, said HIV needed to be treated like any other disease and without stigma.
AIDS is the second most common cause of death among adolescents globally and the leading cause of death among adolescents aged 10 to 19 in Africa, according to the United Nations’ programme UNAIDS.
“To me it is totally absurd that in today’s society that young people, the first time they know or the first time they hear about HIV and AIDS, is probably by the time it is too late,” said Harry during a visit to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine this week.
Figures show about 36.7 million people worldwide have HIV, which is spread through blood, semen and breast milk. Only around half have access to treatment, and many do not know they have the virus.
Harry’s campaigning to combat AIDS follows the work of his late mother Princess Diana who opened Britain’s first HIV/AIDS unit in London in 1987 and famously shook hands with and kissed an AIDS patient during a hospital visit.
Harry, who is fifth in line to the throne, set up Sentebale after visiting the Southern African nation of Lesotho in 2004 and seeing for himself the children impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic which led him to filming a documentary there in 2005.
