HIV / AIDS
HIV / AIDS
AIDS is a dangerous disease that has hit the human race. The absence of a vaccine and medicine to put a stop to this disease has created more difficulties to efforts in controlling the AIDS epidemic in this Country. The first HIV case reported in this Country was in the year 1986. Since then, the total number of HIV cases reported to the Ministry of Health Malaysia (MOHM) has been increasing every year. A total number of 51, 256 HIV cases had been reported in Malaysia until December 2002. Based on the Ministry of Health Malaysia 's statistics, more than 40% of those infected by HIV are youth below the age of 29.

Reported HIV infections have close relations with individual behaviors and lifestyle. It has been confirmed that the two major ways of infections are through sexual relations and sharing of drug injection needles. Social illness problems arising from moral decadence among youth that could lead to the spread of HIV becomes more obvious and worrying. A research on the youth loitering (“lepak”) behaviors that has been conducted in 1994 reveals that 18% out of 6,110 youth respondents has had the experience of having free sex, 14% has had drug abuse experience. A research on youth and AIDS that has been conducted in 1996 on 4,347 general youth with ages between 13 – 25 revealed that 6% has had free sex, 5% had been involved in drug addiction and 31% in smoking. The negative development above if not controlled urgently will become worst and will further worsen the AIDS problem. Therefore special preventive steps with concentration on youth should be taken.