How does HIV affect children in South Africa?

Answer 1

The most direct way for HIV to affect a child is when they themselves are infected. As the facts below demonstrate, staggering numbers of children are affected in this way:

• At the end of 2007, there were 2 million children living with HIV around the world.1
• An estimated 370,000 children became newly infected with HIV in 2007.2
• Of the 2 million people who died of AIDS during 2007, more than one in seven were children. Every hour, around 31 children die as a result of AIDS.3

International law defines a child as being a person aged below 18 years, but the statistics above (taken from UNAIDS, one of the largest international AIDS organisations) define children as people under the age of 15. Most other international AIDS organisations use this definition as well, and since this page is based on AIDS data, we also use the word 'child' to refer to a person aged below 15 years.

Children at the Raphael Centre, South Africa

Most children living with HIV ­- around 9 out of 10 - live in Sub-Saharan Africa, the region of the world where AIDS has taken its greatest toll. Large numbers of children with HIV also live in the Caribbean, Latin America and South/South East Asia.4 Around 90% of all children living with HIV acquired the infection from their mothers during pregnancy, birth or breastfeeding.5 Many countries that had previously seen child-survival rates rise, as a result of improved healthcare, are now seeing these rates fall again. In Botswana and Zimbabwe, for instance, child mortality rates have nearly doubled since 1990.6

In Africa, studies suggest that one in three newborns infected with HIV die before the age of one, over half die before reaching their second birthday, and most are dead before they are five years old.7 Conversely, in developed countries, preventive measures ensure that the transmission of HIV from mother to child is relatively rare, and in those cases where it does occur, a range of treatment options means that the child can survive - often into adulthood. This shows that with funding, trained staff and resources, the infections and deaths of many children in lower-income countries might easily be avoided.

Children affected by AIDS

Because every child today is growing up in a world where AIDS is a devastating reality, some people say that every child is affected by the epidemic, whether they are infected or not. Other talk specifically about children who have been orphaned by AIDS, or those who are HIV-positive. Regardless of how people look at the situation, it is clear that there are many ways in which a child can be affected by HIV, and that it is not only those who are infected that are suffering as a result of the epidemic.

HIV can damage a child's life in three main ways: through its effects directly on the child, on that child's family, and on the community that the child is growing up in.

The direct effects of HIV on children

• Many children are themselves infected with HIV

The effects of HIV on a child's family

• Children live with family members who are infected with HIV.
• Children act as carers for sick parents who have AIDS.
• Many children have lost one or both parents to AIDS, and are orphaned.
• An increasing number of households are headed by children, as AIDS erodes traditional community support systems.
• Children end up being their family's principal wage earners, as AIDS prevents adults from working, and creates expensive medical bills.

The effects of HIV on a child's community

• As AIDS ravages a community, schools lose teachers and children are unable to access education.
• Doctors and nurses die, and children find it difficult to gain care for childhood diseases.
• Children may lose their friends to AIDS.
• Children who have HIV in their family may be stigmatized and affected by discrimination

This is the site I went to http://www.avert.org/children.htm