DAVAO CITY”•A 13-year-old girl is the youngest victim here of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus that causes AIDS, a source said Thursday.
Gloria Serrano, a nurse at the Reproductive Health Wellness Center, says the girl is the youngest of 1,661 patients they have treated based on the records they have been keeping since 1984.
The Health Department continues to warn people that if the growth of the “HIV generation” is not stopped, the number of cases may top 100,000 within eight years.
Serrano says the youngest victim is from Baguio City but she tested positive here.
“She was on vacation but her aunts brought her here for an HIV test, and that was the time they found out she was carrying the virus,” Serrano said.
She says the girl got the virus in Baguio City, where she had anal sex with a man. The girl had rashes all over her body when she was brought in.
The center recorded 38 victims of the virus in June 2016 of whom 34 were male and four were female. Most of the transmission modes were homosexual.
Serrano says they regularly visit the commercial sex workers in the city for their monthly smear tests.
“At least twice a month they undergo a smear test,” she said.
“We check on them at night and we go from establishment to establishment. We see to it that they are checked.”
Serrano says the center continues to give counseling to those who test positive for HIV and regularly gives them medicine.
The Health Department continues to raise the alarm over the increasing number of HIV and AIDS infections. Funny Pearl A. Gajunera
“This is the HIV generation and it’s here to stay for at least 10 to 15 years,” Genesis May Samonte, of the department’s epidemiology bureau, said during an HIV-AIDS seminar in Subic, Zambales.