Child AIDS awareness activist kidnapped in Honduras

Keren Dunaway Gonzalez at the AIDS 2008 opening press conference. (Via Flickr/International AIDS Society)

Update:  Honduran AIDS campaigner Keren Dunaway Gonzalez, who rose to prominence for her activism as an HIV-positive child, was rescued Tuesday following an eight-hour kidnapping ordeal, officials said.

Public Security Minister Arturo Corrales told a local television channel that the girl had been rescued by police and was undergoing medical tests at a private hospital in San Pedro Sula.

Original story continues here:

Honduran AIDS awareness campaigner Keren Dunaway Gonzalez, who rose to prominence for her activism as an HIV-positive child, was kidnapped Tuesday in the city of San Pedro Sula, police said.

Dunaway Gonzalez, who wowed delegates when she gave the opening speech at the 2008 International AIDS Conference as a 12-year-old girl, was seized by three gunmen as she sat in a parked pickup outside her organization’s offices in the northwestern city.

Her mother, who was also in the pickup, was released a few blocks away. Police later found the vehicle abandoned nearby.

“The Dunaway family is appealing for Keren to be freed because she must take her anti-retroviral medication,” said Katherine Calderon, spokeswoman for Llaves, the organization where the 18-year-old activist runs a magazine for HIV-positive children.

Honduras ranks among the most violent nations in the world, and the United Nations has warned that violence against women is on the rise in the small Central American country.