1,000 Children Get Hiv Each Day U.N. Urges Action To Avoid Sharp Hike In Mortality Rate

At least a thousand children are contracting the AIDS virus each day, according to a U.N. report that warns of sharp increases in deaths among children unless immediate steps are taken.

There were some 400,000 new HIV cases involving children under 18 last year, and some 350,000 children died of AIDS, the disease caused by HIV, the Geneva-based group UNAIDS said in its report released Friday.

The report did not supply statistics for previous years, but said that people under 18 are one of the fastest-growing groups of AIDS victims.

It warned of big increases in infant mortality due to the disease - or rates of death for children less than 5 years old - especially in developing countries where there is a lack of medicine and health care.

In some regions of the world, those rates would increase by as much as 75 percent by the year 2000 unless there is immediate intervention, UNAIDS executive director Peter Piot said.

AIDS is spread most often by sexual contact, by contaminated syringes or exposure to infected blood. But children often contract the disease from their mothers - either in the womb or through breastfeeding.

“Anything that affects children affects half of society,” said Elizabeth Mataka, director of the Zambia-based nonprofit group Family Health Trust.