The Millennium Development Goals

Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases Goal 6: Save the next generation.

The facts:

• At the end of 2007, more than 33 million people were living with AIDS.
• Some 25 million people have died as a result of AIDS since the disease was identified.
• Africa remains the region hardest hit by AIDS: 68 percent of all people living with HIV and 76 percent of AIDS deaths in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa, even though the region only accounts for 12 percent of the world’s population.
• UNICEF estimated in 2001 that a child loses a parent to AIDS every 14 seconds. That means that every day, 6,000 children will lose a parent to AIDS.
• Every 30 seconds, a child dies from malaria. In fact, malaria accounts for about one in five of all childhood deaths, with 90 percent of these occurring in Africa.
• Someone in the world is newly infected with tuberculosis bacilli every second.

AIDS, malaria, and other diseases compound to incapacitate entire communities — economies, families, and social structures. These diseases are killing at a terrifying and growing rate, reversing the positive effects of 50 years of development gains in sub-Saharan Africa. Children have lost teachers, mothers, fathers, and the safety net they provide. AIDS leaves children susceptible to exploitation and abuse; it forces many to take on the role of adults, some as young as age 5. The HIV and AIDS Hope Initiative is World Vision's effort to reverse this devastation by increasing and intensifying responses to HIV and AIDS in all of the nearly 100 countries where World Vision operates. The overall goal of the Hope Initiative is to reduce the global impact of the disease through the expansion of programs for HIV prevention, care, and advocacy.

How World Vision combats HIV and AIDS, malaria, and other diseases

Malaria prevention: World Vision is working in dozens of African countries to offer help in preventing malaria, including medication, training, and insecticide-treated mosquito nets.

HIV prevention for children ages 5-15: World Vision pays special attention to children ages 5-15 because they offer a "window of hope" for HIV prevention. Our first strategy focuses on ensuring that young children acquire the values, knowledge, and skills they need to protect themselves before they enter the high-risk period of later adolescence and adulthood. Our second strategy is helping communities protect their children from neglect, exploitation, and abuse, each of which puts children at risk of HIV infection. All members of the community are provided with age-appropriate, values-based life skills material and training.

Prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV: World Vision educates communities about the implications that HIV and AIDS has for pregnant women and their unborn children. World Vision also encourages voluntary counseling and testing for HIV infection and helps fight stigma and discrimination against those who are HIV-positive.

Care: World Vision, in partnership with communities, initiates and supports home-based care programs that use a combination of disease management, palliative care, and spiritual and psychosocial counseling. World Vision also works to strengthen and expand traditional systems of care through structures including kinship networks.

Advocacy: World Vision's HIV and AIDS advocacy focuses on four key issues: strengthening care for orphans and vulnerable children, reducing the vulnerability of girls and women to HIV, increasing access to treatment and care, and mobilizing resources for expanded HIV and AIDS response.

Integrating HIV and AIDS response: There is no sector of World Vision’s relief and development work that is unaffected by HIV and AIDS. As a result, World Vision reviews interventions through an HIV-and-AIDS lens, making sure actions contribute toward preventing the spread of HIV and mitigating the impact of AIDS.

Eradicate Extreme Poverty & Hunger		Achieve Universal Primary Education		Promote Gender Equality & the Empowerment of Women		Reduce Child Mortality
Reduce Maternal Mortality		Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and Other Diseases		Ensure Environmental Sustainability		Develop a Global Partnership for Development

Learn more

• Study the Bible to learn what it says about the poor.