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African children orphaned aided by AIDS

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Traditional healers protest with song and dance in Durban South Africa Wednesday July 12 2000 where the XIII International AIDS Conference is being held. The traditional healers are demanding that they be included in the research aimed at finding a cure for the desease which is killing thousands of people world wide. (AP Photo)

July 14, 2000

DURBAN (AP) - Nearly 28 million children in Africa will have lost at least one of their parents to AIDS by the year 2010, causing a social nightmare for the region's countries for decades, according to a report released Thursday.

"The HIV pandemic is producing orphans on a scale unrivaled in history," said Susan Hunter, an author of the "Children on the Brink 2000" report by the U.S. Agency for International Development. A summary was released at the 13th International AIDS Conference.

Currently there are nearly 16 million children who have lost at least one parent to the disease. About 90 percent of these orphans are in sub-Saharan Africa.

By 2010, about one in three children in Namibia, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and South Africa will have lost a parent, most of them to AIDS.

Famine, wars and other disease outbreaks often cause a large increase in orphans, but those are short-term calamities that quickly end, Hunter said. AIDS will continue to create millions of new orphans for decades.

Throughout the developing world, at least 44 million children will have lost at least one parent, 30 million of them to AIDS, according to the report.

The estimates do not include children born with the virus that causes AIDS, since most of them will likely die before they reach age 5.

Midwives, Obedience Xaba, left, and Lindiwe Shange, right, feed babies at Shepherds Keep Orphanage in Durban, South Africa, Wednesday, July 12, 2000. The U.S. Congress has debated a Clinton Administration request for an additional $42 million to help sub-Saharan African nations overwhelmed by the HIV/AIDS crisis as the XIII Interational AIDS Conference is underway in Durban. More than 40 million children will be orphaned by AIDS by 2010 according to U.S. government projections. (AP Photo)

The orphans will strain the resources of families, communities and governments, said John Williamson, the report's other author.

"AIDS is changing the social landscape in the most affected countries," he said. "It's creating an unprecedented set of child welfare problems."

Children whose parents become ill often leave school because they are forced to care for them or get a job to support the family, Hunter said.

As important as the loss of education and economic security is the loss of a loving environment, where children will be cared for, said Tony Barnett, a professor at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain who has studied the social and economic impact of AIDS.