Aids kills a kid every 15min

2005-03-18 10:41

Johannesburg - The suffering of Zimbabwean children is being forgotten in a standoff over politics and aid, the United Nations Children's Fund said on Thursday.

Zimbabwe suffers the world's fourth-highest HIV infection rate and has seen the highest rise in child mortality, yet receives just a fraction of the donor funding lavished on other countries in the region, Unicef said in a statement.

Donors cite concern that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's increasingly autocratic regime would use any assistance for political purposes.

"The world must differentiate between the politics and the people of Zimbabwe," Carol Bellamy, on her final African tour as Unicef's executive director, said in the statement. "Every day children in Zimbabwe are dying of HIV/Aids. Every day children are becoming infected, orphaned, and forced to leave school to care for sick parents."

Gripped in crisis

Earlier this week, the London-based rights group Amnesty International reported the state-run Grain Marketing Board continues to manipulate the distribution of food aid, denying opposition supporters access to maize, the staple for most Zimbabweans in the run-up to March 31 parliamentary elections.

The campaign has seen accusations of violence and intimidation orchestrated by Mugabe's party.

Zimbabwe has been gripped by political and economic crisis since the government began seizing white-owned farms in an often-violent land redistribution program in 2000. It has also suffered the devastating effects of successive years of drought and the Aids pandemic ravaging the continent.

One in every eight Zimbabwean children dies before the age of 5, a 50% increase since 1990, Unicef said. A child dies every 15 minutes due to Aids complications, and one in five are now orphans - one million of them because of Aids.

The country has received no support from the United States President's Initiative on HIV and Aids or the World Bank's Map Initiative for 2004-5. And it has received only limited funds from the Global Fund against Aids Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Despite the dearth in funds, Unicef said Zimbabwe is making progress in the fight to protect children.

Zimbabwe is one of few countries with a National Plan of Action for Orphans and Vulnerable Children, which includes a monitoring and evaluation plan, Unicef said.

- AP