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 world’s 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 region’s 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