THAILAND: AIDS is the leading cause of death worldwide for people aged 15 to 49 and this has left 15 million children orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS, according to a report launched yesterday at the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok.
An estimated 12.3 million children have been orphaned by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa alone, and their numbers could rise to 50 million by the end of the decade, according to the report Children on the Brink 2004, prepared by UNICEF, UNAIDS and USAID. Orphans are defined as children under 18 who have lost one or both parents.
Ms Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF, said parts of Africa were experiencing "a tidal wave of orphaning" but not much is being done at government level to tackle the issue.
She said that parents, particularly mothers, must be kept alive as long as possible by ensuring access to HIV drugs and other services. More support must be provided to extended families and community-based organisations taking on the challenge of looking after these children.
The head of UNAIDS, Dr Peter Piot, warned that like Africa, Asia could be confronted with "a serious orphan crisis unless it takes urgent steps to stop the epidemic in its tracks. To avoid having millions more children become orphaned due to AIDS, countries must do everything they can to prevent people from becoming newly infected in the first place."
USAID's Dr Anne Peterson said caring for these children was critically important and a central part of the US president's emergency plan for AIDS relief, the $15 billion PEPFAR initiative.
The UN secretary general, Mr Kofi Annan, attending his first International AIDS Conference, challenged the US through the media to show the same commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS as to fighting "the war on terror". He said that the war on terror could kill thousands but the AIDS pandemic was killing millions.
The bulk of US funds is being disbursed bi-laterally through PEPFAR in 15 countries in Africa and the Caribbean. The strings attached include spending a third of the funds on sexual abstinence programmes and a stipulation that only brand-name drugs can be purchased for anti-retroviral treatment programmes.
Dr Peter Mugyenyi, a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland, runs one of Africa's largest AIDS drug programmes, with 11,000 people enrolled at his research centre in Kampala.
He told The Irish Times that 200 orphans infected with the HIV virus were enrolled in the programme at a cost of $120 per month per child for brand drugs six times more expensive than the generics. "For the last three or four years we have been using the generic three-in-one combination anti-retroviral therapy for 6,000 patients and the outcome is excellent - just as good as the brand names," Dr Mugyenyi said.