WEST AFRICA: Child deaths from HIV/AIDS to keep growing

DAKAR, 19 October 2006 (IRIN) - Almost 99 percent of mothers with the HIV virus are not getting the drugs to stop them infecting their unborn children, sparking a cycle of neglect that is affecting more than 4.2 million children in West and Central Africa alone.

Just 1.3 percent of pregnant women in West and Central Africa who are infected with the HIV/AIDS virus have access to the anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs that stop them infecting their babies, the UN children’s agency UNICEF said on Wednesday.

As a result, 22,000 HIV-infected babies are born in West and Central Africa every year, less than one percent of who get ARV therapy. About 680,000 children under 14 years old were living with HIV/AIDS by the end of 2005, with 22,000 new infections during that year alone, the new figures say.

When their parents subsequently die, the children are more likely to skip school, not get enough food to fill their stomachs or nourish them, and to suffer from extreme anxiety, UNICEF says.

"The efforts in favour of orphaned children are very, very inadequate in the region", Cheick Tidiane Tall, who heads one of the biggest NGO networks in West Africa, Africaso, said.

According to UN agencies and donors, more than 4.2 million children have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS in West and Central Africa alone, a region widely perceived to have some of the lowest prevalence on the continent.

More than half the orphans in West and Central Africa live in Nigeria, where UNICEF estimates that 1.8 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS - more than in any country in Africa.

Progress a “distant dream”

A UN and NGO campaign kick-off one year ago to shine more light on AIDS orphans has made a small dent in the problem.

“In the space of a year a lot has happened. Some of the main donors have given up to 10 percent of their grants to children, and the cost of pediatric drugs has falled,” Eric Mercier, HIV/AIDS advisor to the UN children’s agency UNICEF in the Senegal capital Dakar told IRIN.

“Civil society is working hard within the communities to help them to cope with their situation, although we need to help them to be more effective,” Mercier said.

But NGO leaders are scathing about the response.

According to Tidiane Tall at Africaso, cash shortfalls and not getting the right information are the main obstacles stopping NGOs getting more involved with orphans.

"We, civil society, do not have the technical capacities to take care of this population, our contribution within the international institution boards is far from enough and we do not get access to funding sources", he said.

Sostene Bucyana, regional advisor for US bilateral cooperation on AIDS in West Africa, stressed that financial resources were available but NGOs were in need of assistance and support to raise funds.

"We need to teach the existing institutions like the Global Fund [against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria], and civil society how to approach the children issue in order to systematically integrate some consistent action plans in their strategies", Bucyana said.

USAID contributes 33 percent to the Global Fund budget, and is one of the main sources of funding in the fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic. "The resources exist, they are limited but they exist. We now need to make the children issue a priority" Bucyana said.

UN officials say the number of children being orphaned and infected by HIV/AIDS is only going to grow.

UNICEF with UNAIDS, and some NGOs and donors, has responded by launching a new awareness raising appeal, the ‘Dakar Call to Action’.

"Considering the 10-year time lag between infection and death, the number of orphans will continue to rise for at least the next decade and progress in education, health and development will remain a distant dream," UNICEF regional director Esther Guluma told reporters at the campaign’s launch on Wednesday.

Between 1990 and 2010, the number of children orphaned by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole will have risen from less than a million to more than 15 million, UNAIDS estimates.

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