A global campaign to lift the veil that hides the shattering effects of HIV/Aids on the children of the world is launched today by UNICEF, the United Nation's children's arm. Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the UN, will join the actor Sir Roger Moore and the film director Spike Lee for the main launch in New York. Jemima Khan, the UNICEF UK ambassador, will lead the London event, while Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, another ambassador for the organization, officiates in Geneva.

UNICEF is seeking to correct popular impressions of Aids that lead us to believe that it mostly strikes adults and is preventable because it results from unprotected sex, especially between homosexual men, or from intravenous drug use.

But the truth, trumpeted by UNICEF today, is very far from that. Children account for one in seven of all new infections of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV, which leads to Acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or Aids.

UNICEF estimates that the chances of a male child living in the most heavily affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa catching the disease at some stage of their lives are approaching 90 per cent.

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