The HIV/AIDS epidemic is now in the playgrounds of schools throughout the nation, and is becoming a horror to parents who find out that their child is one of the statisics in the epidemic. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, condoms are being given to 11 year olds in lieu of Barbie's for girls, and Tonka Toys for boys.

Philly has the highest number of sexually active teens, and one of the lowest number for those using a protection. Philadelphians are being infected at a rate more than 50 percent higher than residents of New York City, and five times the national average. An estimated 1,400 Philadelphians are newly infected each year, plus more than 16,000 are living with HIV or AIDS. There are those who do not realize that they have been infected, and are believed to be responsible for a large portion of new cases.

HIV/AIDS isn't just a “gay disease” anymore with half of new infections in Philadelphia being through heterosexual contact, a third are the result of men having sex with men, and just 18 percent arise from drug addicts sharing dirty needles, the new federal analysis shows.

Philadelphia has the second-highest percentage of Black/African Americans residents of the 10 most populated cities with 43.2 percent, according to the 2000 census. The high numbers of infections is spreading among Black /African American men and increasing at rapid rates among Black /African American and Hispanic Women. Seventeen percent of adolescents, 13 to 19 years of age, were Black/African American, yet an estimated 75 percent of HIV diagnoses in 13 to 19 year olds were in Black/African American adolescents.

Nationwide HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is highest in Black/African American communities. As the pie chart below shows, Blacks/African Americans accounted for the largest proportion of people living with an AIDS diagnosis in 2008.

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Nationwide almost half of male adults and adolescents living with AIDS in 2008 became infected with HIV through male-to-male sexual contact. Two-thirds of female adults and adolescents living with an AIDS diagnosis in 2008 were infected through heterosexual contact.

The Philadelphia Department of Public Health's speed up efforts to be more aggressively in targeting the minority communities. Philadelphia has launched a campaign to reverse these trends with “Take Control Philly” a website that offers mail-order condoms to children as young as eleven. The CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey showed that 15 percent of children under 13 have had their first sexual encounter. To add on to this hell, the infectious syphilis(with no cure) spiked 45 percent in Philadelphia in 2009, with the infectious gonorrhea (with no cure) jumping 36 percent in 2010.

The greater evil is the new analysis that shows that teenagers who have had either one of these STD's are at 2.5 to three times greater risk of contracting the far more deadly HIV the one that's resistance to all medications within the next few years.

The Philly website provides information on sexually transmitted diseases and where to go for help, as well as straight talk and explicit illustrations on how to use a condom.The website states that if teenagers feel that he/she is ready for sex to use protection every time which means using a condom and using it right. To back this up The City of Philly has launched a “custom” condom called “The Freedom Condom”. So far there hasn't been a public outcry yet but the CDC and all local nonprofit organizations that works with teens on the prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases are bracing themselves for it.

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