| The day is fast approaching when it will take stepping over bodies to ignore AIDS on the mission field. More than 60 million people have been infected with HIV since the epidemic began two decades ago. In 2001, it claimed an estimated 3 million lives.
It is projected that between 2000 and 2020 in 45 of the most affected countries, 68 million people will die prematurely as a result of AIDS. The greatest toll will be in sub-Saharan Africa where 55 million of those deaths are expected.
In many countries, AIDS is erasing decades of progress in life expectancy. For example, the average life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa is currently 47 years. Before AIDS, it was 62 years. In Botswana, life expectancy from birth has dropped below 40 years, the lowest expectancy since before 1950.
Children and young people are particularly hard hit by this epidemic. The under-5 mortality rate in sub-Saharan Africa has increased by 20 percent to 40 percent.
But Africa is not the only continent where AIDS is having an impact. Increase of incidence is being felt in Europe, South America, China and India.
By the end of 2001, 13.4 million children worldwide under the age of 15 had lost a mother, father or both parents to the disease. The number is expected to jump to 25 million by 2010.
The death of one parent at a young age usually does not imply the other parent will die soon. But with AIDS, if one parent is infected with HIV, the probability the spouse is HIV-positive is quite high. This usually means the child will lose both parents within a relatively short time.
Twelve countries in sub-Saharan Africa account for 70 percent of these orphans, and the number of orphans will continue to rise for at least a decade.
It is important to recognize that these orphans are part of a much larger, worldwide crisis. Countries that have high numbers of orphans due to AIDS also have high levels of children seriously impacted by the disease who are at risk and vulnerable in other ways.
Older children often are forced into the role of caregiver for their parents and younger siblings. But in most cases, relatives care for the majority of them.
These households of aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers stretch often scarce resources to provide food, school expenses and other essentials-not only for the orphans they take in-but for the children they already have in their care.
As orphans become older, they are also at risk for sexual exploitation, further propagating the disease and adding to the HIV infection.
Widespread loss of life from AIDS also undermines communities. Highly skilled personnel in public management, social services, education and health care are becoming ill and dying in large numbers. The pandemic diminishes labor and agricultural productivity, weakens social structures, increases demand for health and other services, and reduces the capacity to deliver them.
It also contributes to increased crime and social unrest as despair mounts and individuals run out of options.
For those of us in the Christian community, AIDS presents a new urgency-the victims are God's beloved daughters and sons. To deny them the good news of Jesus Christ in unconscionable.
-Ed.
Statistics taken from the UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. |
