Pediatric HIV Fact Sheet

Global HIV: Children and Adolescents

CDC’s leadership in addressing HIV in children saves young lives and helps build healthier futures. Through CDC’s unparalleled scientific expertise, technical knowledge, and on the-ground efforts, countries are advancing critical progress in the prevention and treatment of maternal and pediatric HIV.

Since 2003, CDC has played a fundamental role in the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief’s (PEPFAR) prevention of mother-to-child transmission and pediatric and adolescent HIV response efforts. In 2024, CDC supported HIV testing for over 8.4 million pregnant women as part of antenatal care and provided lifesaving treatment or ART to over 441,000 pregnant women and 342,500 children.

Programs Provide Critical Care

Programs to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV provide critical care to pregnant and breastfeeding mothers and their babies. These programs work by:

• Ensuring that mothers are tested for HIV as part of maternal health care

• Providing optimal HIV treatment or prevention services

• Testing services for infants exposed to HIV

Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission

HIV can be transmitted from mothers to their children during pregnancy, delivery, or breastfeeding. Although mother to-child transmission of HIV is largely preventable through antiretroviral therapy (ART) during pregnancy and postpartum, children still represent a significant portion of the global HIV burden.

Progress Made

Since 2000, new HIV infections among children aged 14 years and younger have declined by 79%, with 120,000 new cases in 2024.

However, children around the world still accounted for approximately:

• 3% of all people living with HIV
• 9% of new HIV infections
• 12% of all AIDS-related deaths

Finding and Treating Cases

CDC works with Ministries of Health and partners in supported countries to provide HIV testing and treatment services to children and adolescents. Since many babies with HIV are missed at birth and some can get the virus through breastfeeding, CDC uses innovative strategies to find them and provide testing and treatment services in clinics and communities.

One effective strategy is “index testing”—which offers tests to biological children of mothers and siblings of those living with HIV. These strategies have successfully identified more children with HIV, and linked them to sustained ART.

Closing Care and Treatment Gaps

Only 55 percent of children living with HIV received ART in 2024, compared to 78 percent of adults. A key reason for past challenges in pediatric HIV was the lack of medicines designed specifically for children. To address this difficulty, CDC has supported:

• The rollout of a new pediatric medicine, known as ABC/3TC/ DTG” (pALD), which provides the most effective treatment of HIV in one convenient tablet.
• Patient access to viral load testing to monitor treatment success, and to identify children with challenges to adherence or requiring a different medication.

These strategies have increased access to effective treatment, medications, and lab monitoring services.

cdc.gov/global-hiv-tb