evaluations of case studies to assess the best placement options for HIV/AIDS orppans Africa

Running Head : HIV /AIDS Orphans In Africa

HIV /AIDS Orphans In Africa (Author 's Name (Institution 's Name

Impact OF HIV /AIDS on Orphans : An Introduction

Many countries are now having to deal with large numbers of children orphaned by HIV /AIDS . These and other countries will have to continue to do so for many years to come . Children and young people , and above all orphans , lack support and are susceptible . These include street children , children affected by conflict , disabled children , children affected by HIV /AIDS and girls

Despite the fact

that there are large numbers of HIV children around the world , AIDS is often assumed to be a disease that kills adults Some people may occasionally think of 'AIDS babies , and children who have lost a parent or parents to AIDS - AIDS orphans - are sometimes in the media . However , since HIV , the virus that causes AIDS is commonly transmitted sexually or through drug use , people don 't really think of it affecting children . It does , though and millions of children around the world have had their lives damaged by HIV

All over the world , AIDS is responsible for an increasing number of deaths each year . Of the estimated 2 .8 million killed in 2005 , around half a million were children aged below 15 years . At the end of 2005 an estimated 2 .3 million children worldwide were living with HIV (UNAIDS /WHO 2006 . Lack of HIV supervision facilities in many less-developed countries means it is difficult to produce accurate estimates , and the actual figures could be higher . What is clear is that very large numbers of children around the world are living with HIV and being killed by AIDS - something that is very hard for an adult to accept , harder still for a child who may still be too young to understand why they are dying

In the year 2005 , an estimated 700 ,000 children around the world were newly infected with HIV . More than 80 of these infections took place in sub-Saharan Africa , although Asia and the Caribbean are also seeing increases in the number of children infected with HIV . Most of these children i .e . as many as 90 acquired the infection from their mothers

Child death rates have almost doubled in Botswana and Zimbabwe since 1990 , and many other countries that had seen child-survival rates rise because of improved healthcare , are now seeing these rates fall again Worldwide , at least a quarter of children infected with HIV die before the age of one , up to 60 die before reaching their second birthday , and most die before they are five years old . By comparison , in higher-income countries , the transmission of HIV from mother to child is moderately rare , and in those cases where it does happen , a range of treatment options mean that the child can survive often into adulthood (UNAIDS Global Report , 2004

In many countries , the HIV epidemic has not yet reached its peak , and so the number of children made susceptible by the disease...