[Press Kit]

The crisis: Unique for children left behind

Neither words nor statistics can
adequately capture the human
tragedy of children grieving for dying
or dead parents, stigmatized by
society through association with
HIV/AIDS, plunged into economic
crisis and insecurity by their parents'
death and struggling without services
or support systems in impoverished
communities. The following
characteristics make their crisis
especially acute.
The scale of the problem. More
children have been orphaned by AIDS
in Africa than anywhere else. The
deep-rooted kinship systems that exist
in Africa, extended-family networks
of aunts and uncles, cousins and
grandparents, are an age-old social
safety net for such children that has
long proved itself resilient even to
major social changes. This is now
unravelling rapidly under the strain
of AIDS and soaring numbers of
orphans in the most affected countries. Whereas before AIDS, approximately 2 per cent of children in
developing countries were orphaned,
in 1997 rates in some countries were
7, 9 and even 11 per cent. Capacity
and resources are stretched to
breaking point, and those providing
the necessary care in many cases are
already impoverished, often elderly
and might themselves have depended
financially and physically on the
support of the very son or daughter
who has died.

An AIDS-weakened infrastructure.
The impact of the epidemic is felt
throughout communities and societies,
as teachers and farmers, trained health
care personnel and workers from all
parts of the economy have died and
continue to die in enormous numbers.
National budgets are strained by the
demands: By 2005, the health sector
costs for treatment, care and support
related to HIV/AIDS are expected to
account for more than a third of all
government health-spending in
Ethiopia, more than half in Kenya and
nearly two thirds in Zimbabwe.
As those dying are usually in their
most productive years, many schools,
hospitals, private industries and civil
services are short-staffed. In the
private sector, AIDS-related costs -
including those connected to absenteeism from work, insurance and
the recruitment and retraining of
replacement workers - are estimated
to consume as much as one fifth of all
profits. Economists at the World Bank
conservatively estimate the impact on
countries with high HIV rates as a
loss of 1 per cent of gross domestic
product growth each year.
The effects also reach deeply into
the daily lives of families caring for
someone with the disease, where
resources quickly evaporate. Studies
in urban households of C6te d'Ivoire,
for example, show that when a family
member has AIDS, average income
falls by 52 to 67 per cent, while expenditures on health care quadruple.