UNICEF warns of HIV crisis in teen girls, with 20 cases every hour

A student displays his hands painted with messages as he poses during an HIV/AIDS awareness campaign to mark the International AIDS Candlelight Memorial in India. [Reuters]

Teenagers, and particularly girls, are bearing the brunt of the global AIDS epidemic with around 30 adolescents becoming infected with HIV every hour, according to a report by the United Nations children’s fund UNICEF.

Of those 30 new infections each hour among 15 to 19 year-olds in 2017, around 20 - or two-thirds - were in girls, UNICEF said, representing a “crisis of health as well as a crisis of agency”.