HIV and AIDS, especially orphans

More than 30 million people are currently infected with HIV, two million of them being children. Each day, 7.400 newly-infected are added. 25 million people have already died since the appearance of AIDS, almost 20 million of them having been Africans – many of them having been buried in graves without a tombstone – nameless deaths. Each year, another two million deaths are added. Africa is the continent that must bear the brunt of the epidemic – with disastrous consequences for economy, culture and the future of the continent. The country with the highest HIV prevalence is Swasiland where a third of the population lives with the virus. Amongst the newly-infected, half a million are children, most of whom have been infected perinatally by their HIV-positive mothers. It is no overstatement to say that HIV/AIDS is the biggest epidemic in memory, bigger than the Black Death of the 14th century, when about 25 million people died.

Today, more women than men live with the virus. Here, too, Africa is first: There are 14 infected women for every 10 men infected. Not that women live extremely risky lives (although many women work as sex workers just to survive the next day), but for African women it already constitutes a high risk just to be married: as many African men are promiscuous, they bring home the virus. But unmarried women and girls are also highly vulnerable due to the high rate of sexual violence.

There are about 12 million orphans of whom at least one parent died of AIDS. Without being themselves infected, these children nevertheless are victims of the epidemic because many of them must cope without the help and income of their parents. In an environment with high HIV/AIDS prevalence, they are highly vulnerable, and orphaned teenagers run higher risks of being infected than non-orphans. For this reason it is of paramount importance to include such youth in support programmes in order to break the vicious cycle of being orphaned, neglected, infected, isolated, bedridden and eventually killed.

Here you’ll find additional information and background material around the topic of HIV and AIDS as well as orphaned and vulnerable children:

www.trotz-aids.de