Imagine a catastrophe in which half a country's children are orphaned within five years. It seems unthinkable. Yet there are indications that this could happen in Zimbabwe within the next five years. The cause is not war or famine: it is AIDS. In the city of Bulawayo alone, one in four adults is infected with the HIV virus.
Already millions of children in sub-Saharan Africa have been orphaned by AIDS. For the purposes of AIDS statistics, the United Nations defines an orphan as a child under 15 years of age who has lost either both parents or a mother to the disease. By this definition, more than 11 million of the world's children have been orphaned by AIDS, according to a recent report by UNICEF and UNAIDS. Of these, 95 per cent are in Africa. In Uganda alone, 1.7 million children are orphaned - a staggering number. Most of the children orphaned by AIDS in Africa are too young to fend for themselves. Grandparents - again according to the UN - are now having to rear their children's children. Yet they themselves have virtually no resources with which to do the job. Some grandparents are going back to work - if they can get it - to support their orphaned grandchildren. Worse, perhaps, children are giving up school to work to support their brothers and sisters.
In the West, the damage done by AIDS has been slowed to a great extent by drug therapies costing over £10,000 per treated individual per year. Compare this with a country like Zambia where 20 per cent of the population is HIV positive, and it is estimated that around nine per cent of Zambian children under 15 are orphaned. Yet, according to Jubilee 2000 - the international coalition of organisations campaigning for debt cancellation for the poorest countries - Zambia spends only $17 per person per year on health, but $30 on debt servicing. Elsewhere matters are worse. By any standards, this is a desperate situation. What can be done? One thing would be to support the campaign for the cancellation of the debt of the very poorest countries, without strings attached - and those strings, attached by the International Monetary Fund, are deadly. They include cuts in health budgets, imposition of fees for health care and other conditions which can only be met in ways which have the most damaging effect on the people of these countries.
The United States has agreed to cancel bilateral debts owed to it by the world's poorest countries. There is growing pressure on the British government to follow suit. Ireland has called on the international community to take a "generous and flexible" approach to the heavily-indebted poor countries. By continuing to raise our voices on this issue we can help, in our own way, to address one of the world's great catastrophes.