This edition of HIV Treatment Update (HTU) is themed on the subject of HIV and young people.

HTU hasn’t covered positive youth for a long time. Apart from a short piece on the Don’t Forget the Children conference, the last feature on HIV and young people was Growing Pains in December 2008.

This is for a good reason, and a bad one. The good one is that, as covered in Happy Families two issues ago, babies born with HIV are becoming rare in the UK, thanks to good mother-to-child prevention. What HIV does to kids is becoming less rather than more of a problem (though it may have repercussions in later life: see How HIV harms young brains).

The bad one was that HIV-positive kids didn’t fit into our demographic. They weren’t the kind of older ‘expert patient’ that tends to read HTU. I think we kind of assumed they wouldn’t be interested.

Underlying this was perhaps an assumption about the next generation with HIV, one that you sometimes hear when prevention is discussed. It goes something like:

“Us oldies, we were around in the dark days of AIDS, we had to become politicised and educate ourselves about science and treatments or we’d die. Young people? They don’t care, they never think about HIV till it’s too late and anyway they’re probably more concerned about global warming and [insert current youth cult].”

I maybe even shared this attitude. At least till March this year, when I attended a UK Community Advisory Board meeting on testing in the African community. One of the people there was a young university student who spoke passionately about the problems of adherence and disclosure (see "How can the world accept us if we don't?" in issue 195).

I realised I was wrong: there was a new generation of young HIV-positive people in the UK, many of them second-generation Africans, who had every bit as much energy and fire as the previous generation of AIDS activists. After meeting several I asked two, JD and Max, to write pieces about their experiences and these form the core of this issue. Around it we talk to the professionals involved in their care who are helping them navigate the stormy waters of adolescence and help them turn from ‘HIV-positive child’ to ‘young person thriving with HIV’.

We’ll need this new generation. I was reflecting cheerfully the other day that, given the rate of development so far, the chances are I’ll be dead before they finally find a vaccine for HIV. Till then (and for some while after) we will need to keep up the pressure on governments and funders to put enough money and enough strategic thinking into HIV prevention, care and research to keep the epidemic contained and stop people dying. Especially when recessions bite and compassion fatigue sets in, as now (see HIV - the recession bites). 

I probably won’t want to be an AIDS activist in 15 years time anyway. We’ll need to support, educate and listen to people like Max and JD to carry on the fight. I’m not sure I can forgive myself for quoting Whitney Houston, but what she sang is true: “The children are our future”.