One topic on the discussion table at this year's big International AIDS Conference in Mexico is the ever-increasing number of teenagers growing up HIV-positive and taking antiretrovirals, on top of the usual challenges of adolescence.

"I have a big load of responsibility in my life. I have to divide myself into so many parts that I don't know which of them I really am," says 17-year-old Marta from Brazil. "I have to be mother, daughter, friend, lover, wife. But most of the times I would like to be just a girl."

Brazil is one of the few low-income countries where significant numbers of young people have already been taking HIV drugs since childhood.

Marta and around 20 other Brazilian teenagers have been sharing their experiences of growing up with HIV as part of an innovative, year-long journalism project that gets the young people to write about their experiences in a magazine called Saber Viver Jovern - Youth Savoir Faire - distributed in Portuguese and English.

The magazine's editorial process involves the teenagers in workshops where they're encouraged to talk openly about living without much money, life with HIV, when they choose to tell people about it, and how it affects their sex lives and their rights.

The project, "Thinking about the future", is backed by Brazilian non-governmental organisations Saber Viver and Pela Vidda, and an international one, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance.

Before they started, the young people were skeptical. In an editorial in the magazine they admit they'd asked themselves: "(Will) this be another one of those lectures where adults keep reminding us what we should or shouldn't do?"

But it didn't turn out like that. One of the young people explains: "We talked about everything, taking our stories as examples: how it sucks to take our medication every single day, the difficulties of facing discrimination, how we miss our families or sometimes hate them, our plans for the future, and things we are ashamed of telling others...

"We hope the magazine will help many youngsters living with HIV like us to realise that we are like all the other young people in the world. The only difference is that we have to take medication every day."

Carla is 16 and HIV positive. "I always think about... the time when I got infected," she says. "I had a very nice life until I met a boyfriend who had HIV and did not know. I got infected... and since then my life has completely changed.

"I had never thought that I would go through this: so young and dependent on medication. But with the support of my doctors who are very helpful, and the adverts on TV, I have realised that HIV does not mean death," she says.

Friendship and dating are priorities for teenagers all around the world.

Tamires says: "I have never told any of my friends. I am ashamed. I think they won't come close to me anymore. They will be disgusted. There are times I want to tell them, but I don't know how, I just can't do it."

Another young woman involved in the project, Suellen, was born with the virus. She says: "I wish people with HIV had a better quality of life and more choice of medication. I am 20 and I've been taking medication for 12 years."

She's decided to take part in a study for a new medicine called maraviroc, after having to change medication seven or eight times. "What is available for me here no longer works for me," Suellen says.

She interviews 15-year-old Elizana and 20-year-old William for the magazine. The couple say they have been dating for three years. Two years into their relationship William found out he was HIV-positive.

"Are you afraid of transmitting the virus to her?" Suellen asks.

"I don't want her to go through what many other people are suffering," William says. "My greatest concern is the medication. I am not taking it yet, but I know the day will come, and I don't want that to happen to her yet."

International HIV/AIDS Alliance: www.aidsalliance.org

The Alliance is a global partnership of nationally-based organisations working to support communities to reduce the spread of HIV and meet the challenge of AIDS.

The International HIV/AIDS Alliance is a global partnership of national organisations working to support communities to reduce the spread of HIV and meet the challenge of AIDS. Saber Viver is a Rio de Janeiro-based organisation in Brazil that produces a magazine for people living with HIV

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