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IN-DEPHT STUDY |
| 6 JANUARY – MISSIONARY CHILDHOOD
DAY |
| THE LONG HOOK OF AIDS |
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Children and adolescents are most affected by AIDS:
in 2000 alone at least 600,000 children under 14 were HIV positive
and in 2002 among the 4.3 million who died of HIV/AIDS, some 500,000
were children (source UNICEF).
Every day 2000 minors under 15 become HIV positive these include children
HIV positive born, infected during their mother’s pregnancy
or at the moment of birth.
Africa is the most serious patient. Statistic forecasts had warned
of this some time ago but now the tragedy of AIDS has penetrated the
heart of Africa, finding in poverty and lack of health structures
fertile soil for reaping peak numbers of victims.
No other region in the world is so affected as sub-Saharan African
countries where three quarters of the people are infected.
Also high is the number of AIDS orphans in the world, about 13 million,
ten million of these under 14 and almost all of these in Africa.
According to UNAIDS medical association in 2001 more than 250,000
children under 14 are orphans because of the HIV virus which reaches
the highest percentages of diffusion in Nigeria, where official figures
report 995,000 infected persons, Ethiopia (989,000 cases) in Democratic
Congo (927,000) Kenya (892,000) Uganda (884,000) and so on to 264,000
cases in Rwanda.
In Zambia the situation is becoming ever more serious because the
epidemic is combined with endemic poverty of village life. In Zambia,
one of the world’s poorest countries, 80% of the people live
below the poverty line and one out of every two children suffers from
malnutrition. Many remote villages are inhabited only by a few old
people and orphan children.
But forecasts for 2010 are grim: in six years time 20 million children
under 14 will have lost one or both parents. |
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