HIV and AIDS is devastating Africa. Enormous numbers of adults are living and dying with HIV/AIDS, with less access to health care than anywhere else in the world. There is little money and a large social stigma of being HIV positive or an AIDS orphan. Many children are without parents, money or skills.
Many of these orphaned children have died. More are dying. Please help us … help children.
A happy partnership – intelligent children growing to independence – wise parents – supportive friends – a comfortable home – fulfilling work – a sense of being where you should be … what could be better?
About half of all orphans are due to the deaths of their parents from AIDS. These young children desperately need help. They need financial support in a country that is very poor by Western standards … and they need emotional support.
In many families, one or more adults are HIV positive or have already died of AIDS. And when a person dies “before their time” – there are often unpleasant emotional consequences for the children of the family … and for their children.
Some of these children will die from malnutrition … without food. Some will die from diseases such as diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria and measles … without treatment. Poverty and illiteracy are made worse by hunger. Abandoned and malnourished children start school later, if at all, and find learning more difficult. These orphans are more likely to die … or to live with emotional scars than your children.
Under stress, both children and adults may lose access to their sense of identity. Following a premature death, other family members, usually young children, may suffer identity loss, and either lose any sense of self or unconsciously identify with a dead person.
This image is from Faces of Africa
Each day in Africa, 9,500 people contract HIV/AIDS and another 6,500 die. A projected 2.5 million will die next year because the continent lacks the medicine to fight the virus. By 2010, Africa will have an estimated 25 million AIDS orphans – defined as children who have lost one or both of their parents to the pandemic.
In Zimbabwe alone, more than 2.2 million people are infected and over 700,000 children are AIDS orphans. One in every four Zimbabweans over age 15 is HIV-positive. The cemeteries are running out of space to bury the estimated 300 Zimbabweans who die from AIDS each day.
References & Credit
Donnette E Davis
