Tanzania can achieve HIV/AIDS free-generation goal, if concerted efforts and urgent interventions are focused on the youth aged 24 years and below, the Tanzania Commission for AIDS (TACAIDS) Executive Chairperson, Dr Fatma Mrisho, has said.

Dr Mrisho said Current statistics showed that 60 per cent of all new HIV infections involved young people below 24 years. The TACAIDS chief further made chilling revelations that of the 60 per cent infections, the most hit sex group was girls aged between 15 and 19 years.

She said this on Wednesday in Dar es Salaam, when launching a book containing questions by young people living with HIV/ AIDS in Tanzania. The book was prepared by Tanzanian German Programme to Support Health (TGPSH).

She noted that the number of young people living with HIV/AIDS was estimated to be 132,000, most of them being those aged under 15. "The situation calls for urgent intervention if Tanzania really wants to have an HIV/AIDS free generation," she said. Dr Mrisho noted that young people, boys and girls, were susceptible to infections because sometimes they engage in relationships with older people which makes them have little room to negotiate for safer sex.

According to TGPSH Programme Manager Dr Inge Baumgarten, the book, which was released as part of series, will go a long way in educating the youth countrywide. The Manager said more than one million books had been published and distributed countrywide and they were being used in 18 countries, translated in various languages.

The book has 64 useful questions prepared by youths with HIV/AIDS between September and October 2010 and answered by experts. The Programme is co-funded by German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) and the Tanzanian Government.