Context: Children and AIDS

HIV/AIDS is causing unspeakable human suffering. Across the globe, some 15 million children have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS. More than 2 million children are HIV positive and more than half a million children died last year of AIDS related causes. Millions more have been made vulnerable by the disease, as HIV/AIDS both thrives on and exacerbates other challenges, including poverty, armed conflict, ignorance and gender discrimination, and rolls back decades of progress in child survival.

The front line of the response for children affected by HIV/AIDS is families and communities, whose capacity to care and cope is being stretched beyond limits. Thousands of small-scale grassroots programmes have been implemented by individuals, community-based agencies, faith-based organizations and non-governmental organisations, but organized interventions have reached only a tiny fraction of the most vulnerable children in the countries hardest hit by the pandemic. The vast majority of children affected by HIV/AIDS and their families are facing their grief and struggling to survive without assistance.

As the world’s leading agency for children, UNICEF believes the current incremental improvements in funding and increased focus on children are insufficient to respond to the still-spreading pandemic. There is an urgent need to massively scale-up the response for children affected by HIV/AIDS, and mobilize the partnerships and resources necessary to do so.

General Epidemiology

IN 2003, there were 2.1 million children living with HIV/AIDS, 630,000 new HIV infections among children, & 490,000 child deaths due to AIDS.