Welcoming the “progress that has been accomplished in preventing and treating HIV and AIDS in the past five years,” a Vatican diplomat drew “special attention to children, who remain particularly vulnerable to HIV.”
“Gaps in both diagnosis and treatment mean that the 3% of HIV patients that are children account for 12% of deaths due to HIV,” said Msgr. Marco Formica, interim chargé d’affaires of the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations, in a July 10 statement for a UN meeting on AIDS. “These disparities begin with their mothers who are at-risk and HIV positive and who do not receive adequate testing and consistent treatment.”