SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA - With diseases such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis continuing to claim the lives of millions of Africa's poorest adults, millions more children are being left homeless and orphaned.

"Africa needs more than one billion dollars each year to care for the millions of orphans on the continent," an official spokesman for the United Nations recently stated. "In less than five years," the official continued, "there will be more than 50 million orphans in just 16 of Africa's 53 countries."

"Such a situation," an African Union spokesman explained,
"will easily destabilize countries because these children are
vulnerable and they can be exploited. Funds will be needed for education and healthcare, but we don't know at the moment where the money is coming from."

As a result of the orphan crisis throughout much of the African continent, more than a billion dollars will be needed each year to care for the children.

"In the past, people used to care for the orphans and loved them," a woman whose husband recently died from disease explained. "But these days they are so many, and many people have died who could have assisted them, and therefore orphanhood is a common phenomenon, not strange. The few who are alive cannot support them."

"The epidemic of diseases such as AIDS and malaria in sub-
Saharan Africa has already orphaned a generation of children," explains Fr. John Lynch of the Missionaries of Africa. "Now it seems set to affect future generations."

Official reports estimate that, at the moment, there are more than 34 million orphans in the region today and some 11 million of them have been orphaned by AIDS. Eight out of every 10 children in the world whose parents have died of AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa. During the last decade, the proportion of children who are orphaned as a result of AIDS rose from 3.5% to 32%," Fr. Lynch continues. "Unless we reach out and act now, a whole generation of children
could die before our eyes."

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA - "The staggering number of African
children already orphaned due to disease is only the beginning of a crisis of gargantuan proportions . . . and the worst is yet to come," a study issued by UNICEF recently reported. "AIDS has already orphaned more than 13 million African children, half of whom are between the ages of 10 and 14. The countries that will see the largest increases in the number of orphans -- are those with HIV prevalence
levels already higher than previously thought possible, exceeding 30 percent.

"In these countries," the study concluded, "more than one in five children will be orphaned by 2010; more than 80 per cent of these boys and girls will have lost one or both parents due to AIDS. Even in countries where HIV prevalence has stabilized or fallen, like Uganda,
the numbers of orphans will stay high or rise as parents already infected continue to die from the disease."

Children and young people whose parents have become infected with AIDS virus begin to suffer even before a parent or caregiver has died, the study goes on to say. Since children are unable to earn the same income as their parents, household income plummets. As a result, there is little money for food, clothing, medicine or other basic necessities. Education is interrupted and many children are forced to drop out to either care for a dying parent or go to work to earn money for others who may be too young. Children become depressed and feel alienated from their peers as well as from their families.

Young boys and girls who are having to carry the burden of caring for their entire families eat less and sell whatever they can -- even if that includes themselves.

"Boys and girls who have been orphaned by AIDS are also
stigmatized," explains Missionary of Africa, Fr. John Lynch. "They are known as children whose parents have died from socially embarrassing disease. Besides having had to witness their parents suffering and death, they are now poorer and less healthy than non-orphaned children. They will have a hard time focusing on their education and on life in general. They have been traumatized in ways that few of us will ever be able to understand. And because they are uneducated, they will be subjected to the worst forms of child labor and abuse."