July 10, 2002

by Nigel Marsh - Hope Communications

BARCELONA, WEDNESDAY UNAIDS director Peter Piot introduced the report as 'the most frightening' of the conference, and in many ways it is. That it also deals with the aspect of the AIDS pandemic that is least mentioned here at the 14th International AIDS Conference - orphans and vulnerable children - makes it even more grim.

Children On The Brink 2002 is in its third edition, this year co-published by UNAIDS, UNICEF and USAID. A joint report on orphan estimates worldwide, it becomes the authority on the unparalleled crisis of childhood that faces our world.

The global number of AIDS orphans* is going to double in a decade, the report's authors predict. Current figures (for the year 2001) show there are now 108m orphans in the world, 13.4m (12.4%) of them orphans of AIDS. By 2010 UNAIDS estimates there will be a grand total of 107m orphans in the world - virtually no change there - but a mind-numbing 25m of them will be orphans of AIDS. That's 23.7% of all orphans.

The situation is, predictably, worst in sub-Saharan Africa. Today there are 34m orphans in Africa, of whom 11m are believed to be orphans of AIDS. One third of Africa's orphans, or about one child in 20 overall, has lost his or her parents to HIV.

By 2010, the situation will be much worse. Of the 349m children in Africa, 12% - that's 42m children - will be orphans. Of those, virtually half, 20m children, will be orphaned by AIDS. Which means that 6% of all Africa's children will have lost their parents to the virus.

The catalog of country losses to AIDS is, as ever, depressing. Nigeria alone will have 2.6m orphans from the virus. More than a fifth or Zimbabwe's children will be orphaned, and 89% of those orphans will be due to AIDS - the highest proportion of AIDS orphans by cause in the world. South Africa will have to find ways to deal with 2.3m orphans, 1.7m of whom will be AIDS orphans.

The sheer size of Asian countries will make the impact on them tremendous. India, which in 2010 will have 340m children - almost as many as in the whole continent of Africa - will have 23m orphans, nearly 7% of all Indian children. China will have 12.5m orphans, half a million of them through HIV.

And the effects of AIDS will be being seen in the streets and schoolrooms of Latin America, too. UNAIDS says 752,000 children, nearly 10% of all orphans, will have lost one or both parents to HIV.

*UNAIDS defines 'orphan' as a child who has lost one or both parents.