Grahamstown | Thursday
THE government cannot meet the health and welfare needs of South Africa’s estimated 700 000 Aids orphans, half of whom may be infected with HIV, a new study released on Wednesday said.
In a paper presented this week at a conference held in Alice on Children, Aids and Communal Coping Strategies, the head of University of Fort Hare’s centre for development studies, Pricilla Monyai, warned that with the HIV/Aids pandemic, African governments and their populations faced health and welfare demands ”way out of proportion with available resources”.
The conference, hosted by the university, drew representatives from Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Norway. It aims to develop the foundations for a regional research programme on communal coping strategies of children affected by HIV/Aids.
She pointed out that Africa had lost more than 17-million people to Aids, the southern African region accounted for 98% of all new infections with South Africa &@8212; according to her ”taking the lead” in the rate of daily infections.
According to UNAids 1999 figures, of the 13,1-million children orphaned by Aids globally, 12-million lived in Africa.
”Their number is escalating and is posing a serious threat to the already over-burdened and under-resourced health systems in many African countries,” said Monyai.
She said the idea behind the project was to look at how local communities and families infected and affected by HIV/Aids collectively coped with the consequences of the disease, and the extent to which they were able to care for the children in need.
”The social conditions and needs of children and families in local communities affected by HIV/Aids are complex and need to be captured.”
She said current research showed that children orphaned by Aids suffered ”cumulative pain and stress” as a result of the struggle to survive.
Grief and confusion through the loss of a loved one and the struggle to survive was sometimes compounded by prejudice and exclusion. Many orphaned by Aids were left struggling, neglected and ill.
Monyai said it was hoped that the results of her study would assist policy making. – Sapa