Africa Foundation For AIDS

AFFA, Africa Foundation For Aids is committed to the bettering of lives of all people affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa, and supporting organizations to limit the spread of HIV/AIDS infection and alleviate the impact of the epidemic in the most helpless communities of Africa.

Children are incredibly vulnerable:
Some are abandoned by parents too sick to care for them and others are orphaned when their parents succumb to AIDS. In 2004, more than 500,000 children under the age of 14 died of AIDS.

Of the half million children who died of AIDS, 80% would have lived at least another 10 years if only they had access to antiretroviral therapy (ART), according to the World Health Organization. One in every six AIDS deaths each year is a child, yet children represent less than one of every thirty persons getting treatment in developing countries today.

Women are increasingly becoming the biggest victims, with 13 infected women for every 10 infected men (up from 12 in 2002). That difference is even more pronounced among 15 to 24-year-olds. In Kenya and Mali, there are 45 women living with HIV from this age group for every 10 men living with the virus.

HIV prevalence rates in some African countries are already at alarming levels. Seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa have adult prevalence rates of more than 17%, with rates exceeding 35% in Botswana (37.3%) and Swaziland (38.8%). In West Africa, prevalence rates tend to vary between one and five per cent, while in East and Central Africa the rates vary from four percent to 15%.
 

info@africafoundationforaids.org

Published: Thursday, January 15, 2009

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