[Press Kit]

T he AIDS pandemic is the world's
most deadly undeclared war, and
Africa has so far borne its brunt.
In 1998 in Africa, where some
200,000 lives were lost as a result
of conflict and war, AIDS killed
2.2 million people. The disease, now
the leading killer in sub-Saharan
Africa, has taken the lives of 16.3
million people since the epidemic
began. Most, by far, have died
in Africa.
Yet as shocking as these deaths are,
the impact of HIV/AIDS does not end
with them. Because those dying from
AIDS are mainly people in the prime of
their lives who are often parents, a less
well-known and calamitous effect of
AIDS is the vast numbers of children
orphaned by the disease. These children
endure overwhelming and largely
unmitigated losses, living as they do

By the end of the year
2000, a cumulative total of
13 million children - the
majority in Africa - will have
lost their mother or both
parents to AIDS. A Ugandan
boy talks to some of his
15 cousins, all orphaned
by AIDS, outside their grandparents' house where
they live.

in societies already weakened by underdevelopment, poverty and the AIDS
epidemic itself. According to projections, by the end of the year 2000, a
cumulative total of 13 million children
will have lost their mother or both
parents to AIDS, and 10.4 million of
them will still be under the age of 15.
And the worst is yet to come, in
numbers both of deaths and children
left behind. The lives already claimed
by the epidemic are just a fraction of
those that lie ahead, in sub-Saharan
Africa and many other countries of the
world. According to estimates by the
joint United Nations Programme on
HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World
Health Organization (WHO), 12.2
million women and 10.1 million men
were living with HIV in sub-Saharan
Africa at the end of 1999, with infected
women actually outnumbering infected men - a pattern not seen on other
continents. Globally, the figure is 33.6
million people, and they are joined
each year by millions of the people
newly infected.
In its human and social ramifications, AIDS constitutes a global
emergency: It is a growing threat to
stability, exacerbating inequalities
within and between countries, undermining previous gains in development
and harming children. As the projects
described in this report make clear,
stronger commitments and sustainable efforts are urgently needed by the
families, communities and children
on the front line of this epic struggle..i
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