South Africa has most HIV+ children

Ninety percent of the 2 million children living with HIV globally, live in Sub-Saharan Africa, the 2008 United Nations (UN) Aids report has revealed.

African gene raises risk of HIV, research finds

Our children are dying

About 370,000 children younger than 15 years old became infected with HIV last year, bringing the total number of children living with HIV to 2 million.

We see 30,000 pregnant women, of whom about a third are HIV positive - that’s ten thousand women, and that’s just in Soweto alone.”

Last year, an estimated 889,000 South Africans were in need of antiretroviral treatment, but only 371,731 people were actually receiving treatment.

South Africa has by far the largest epidemic in the world, with an estimated 5.7 million people living with HIV.

A grim picture of failure in fighting the country’s ‘Big Five’ killers, most of which are treatable.

About 75 000 children die in South Africa every year before they turn five.

Of those, 22000 are dead within a month of being born, making South Africa one of only 12 countries — along with Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Kenya, all ravaged by war and HIV-Aids — with a rising child mortality rate.

This is a country numbed by the horror of crime and Aids, which take so many lives every day.

According to statistics, released by the World Health Organisation

Aids is the biggest killer, accounting for 35% of the deaths.

Neonatal deaths take up a further 30%.

Diarrhoea kills 11 percent of the under-fives.

The point about these deaths is that the vast majority of them are preventable or manageable if the right healthcare and treatment intervention is applied at the right time.

Aids transmission from mothers to babies can be radically reduced if mothers take the right medication and follow well-established public health guidelines.

Children born with Aids are not born with a death sentence. The failure to manage their health correctly accounts for many deaths.

It is truly shocking that a highly treatable condition such as diarrhoea should claim almost 8000 lives a year.

Clean water, basic health education and minimal, low-cost intervention could eradicate diarrhoea.

It is shocking that thousands of children succumb to what is described in the report as “injuries”.

Again, in all but extreme cases, these are preventable with proper parental supervision and the elimination of violence against children.