Children
Orphaned by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa
More
than 11 million children under the age of 15 in sub-Saharan Africa
have lost at least one parent to HIV/AIDS: 34 million children have
been orphaned overall.
More
than half of those orphaned by HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa are
between the ages of 10 and 15.
Eighty
percent of all the worlds children orphaned by HIV/AIDS reside
in sub-Sahara Africa.
The
orphan crisis in sub-Sahara will worsen dramatically in the coming
years. By 2010, there will be approximately 20 million children
in sub-Saharan Africa who have lost at least one parent to HIV/AIDS.
If
not for HIV/AIDS, the number of orphans in sub-Saharan Africa would
be decreasing.
The
percentage of the regions orphans whose parents died from
HIV/AIDS has grown from 3.5 percent in 1990 to 32 percent in 2001.
By
2010, about half of all the orphans in sub-Saharan Africa will have
become orphans because of HIV/AIDS.
No
other region has been as hard hit by HIV/AIDS as sub-Saharan Africa,
which is home to nearly three-quarters of the worldwide population
of people living with HIV/AIDS.
At
the end of 2002, there were more than 29 million people in sub-Saharan
Africa living with HIV/AIDS. Nearly 10 million of them were young
people between the ages of 15 and 24. Almost three million of them
were children under the age of 15.
HIV/AIDS
killed about 2 million adults in sub-Saharan African in 2002.
Source: UNAIDS 2003
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