1.8m Aids orphans by 2015

2002-06-13 17:46

Durban - South Africa faced the challenge of having to look after 1.85 million children orphaned by the HIV/Aids pandemic in 2015, the Medical Research Council (MRC) said on Thursday.

The figure represented 15% of children under 15, whose mothers will have died of Aids.

These and other statistics - such as the fact that at least 5.7 million children under the age of 18 would have lost one or both parents by 2015 if there were no significant treatment interventions or changes in behaviour - were the theme of a policy brief released by the MRC's burden of disease research unit.

The MRC said the findings were drawn from research done by Leigh Johnson and Professor Rob Dorrington at the University of Cape Town's centre for actuarial research.

The brief said saving short-term costs would merely result in escalation of the long-term costs to society in reduced literacy levels, increased crime and increased economic strain on affected households.

The brief said that current prevention programmes such as changing sexual behaviour patterns, condom distribution and Aids awareness programmes were unlikely to reduce the number of orphans in the short-term, but in the long-term they would reduce the number of orphans by 10%.

"Although prevention programmes may not achieve short-term reduction in the number of orphans, a significant reduction in the number and trend in number of orphaned children can be achieved through anti-retroviral treatment programmes to all HIV-positive individuals," the brief said.

Such programmes may succeed in extending the lives of a large number of parents to the stage where their children were self-supporting.

By 2015 the number of maternally orphaned children could be roughly half the number expected without any anti-retroviral intervention, at 1.15 million, the brief said.

- SAPA