- Reuters
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan (left) and his wife Nane talk to HIV-infected children at a hospital in Bangkok on Monday. Annan led a U.N. delegation to visit the Bamradnaradoon hospital, hailed by the organization's AIDS agency as a model for the treatment of AIDS patients in southeast Asia.
Patricia Watson, Features Co-ordinator
BANGKOK, Thailand:
ONLY 700,000 AIDS orphans across the globe are receiving any type of support from their governments or non-government organisations, head of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Dr. Peter Piot revealed yesterday.
Speaking at the XV International AIDS Conference at a press conference to release the UNICEF publication, Children On the Brink 2004, Dr. Piot noted that this figure is less than five per cent of the 15 million children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic.
Dr. Piot called the situation an 'injustice'.
"These children are the forgotten elements in this crisis. It is time for the care of orphans to become an integral part of AIDS prevention. Some countries do not have even a policy of support for children," he said.
Calling the orphan crisis the "cruellest legacy of the AIDS epidemic", executive director of the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), Carol Bellamy echoed the view put forward by Dr. Piot.
SILENCE IS A KILLER
"The silence that surrounds children affected by HIV/AIDS and the inaction that results is morally reprehensible and unacceptable. If this situation is not addressed, and not addressed now with increased urgency, millions of children will continue to die, and tens of millions more will be further marginalised, stigmatised, malnourished, uneducated, and psychologically damaged," she stated.
In fact, Dr. Piot explained that more than a half of the children now orphaned by AIDS are adolescents, many already sexually active and extremely vulnerable.
At the end of 2003, statistics showed that 55 per cent of orphans were in the age group 12 - 17 years old. Thirty three per cent were six to 11 years old and 12 per cent 0 - five years. In Jamaica, there is an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 orphans and other children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS.
"Parts of Sub-Saharan Africa are undergoing a tidal wave of orphaning in varying degrees due to AIDS," Ms. Bellamy said. The report, Children on the Brink 2004, revealed that 3.8 million children in the region have lost one or both parents to AIDS and this is expected to move to 18.4 million by 2010.
Ms. Bellamy said the reason so many children across the globe have been allowed to fall through the cracks should be placed squarely on governments of each country.
"Governments made a commitment to do something about orphans, but to date only 17 have put together a plan of action for orphans," Ms. Bellamy said.
She noted that "children orphaned by AIDS bear an especially onerous burden, for they must not only endure the emotionally shattering loss of parents or caregivers, but the contempt and often outright stigmatisation of their communities. These children's status as outcasts makes them easy targets for violence, exploitative forms of child labour, exclusion from school, and gender-based discrimination that exposes orphaned girls to sexual abuse."
United States Agency for International Development, Dr. Anne Peterson, noted that the estimated 15 million AIDS orphans do not include children affected and therefore the situation of children could be far worse than is actually
being reported.
