Grieving, poor and often neglected, many of the 11 million children of parents who have died of AIDS are stigmatised, denied education and assumed to be infected with the virus, a new UN report states.
To mark World Aids Day yesterday, the United Nations released a new study and statistics on the plight of children left behind when one or both parents die of AIDS, especially in African nations, where the disease has hit hardest.
"The AIDS pandemic has turned sub-Saharan Africa into a killing field, creating an orphan crisis of epic proportions requiring nothing less than an emergency response," said the report, produced by UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation.
By the end of next year, the UN projects that 13 million children will have lost their mother or both parents to AIDS, 10.4 million of them under age 15. Some 95 per cent of the AIDS orphans are in Africa.
Within Africa, eastern and southern African nations account for 48 per cent of the world's HIV-positive population, although only 4.8 per cent of the world's people live in this region.
Infection rates are expected to rise even further because of poor health systems, poverty and limited resources to halt the spread of the virus, which has killed 16 million people around the world and infected 33 million more.
"The skyrocketing number of AIDS orphans is - in addition to the loss of life caused by AIDS - putting a severe strain on traditional support systems in Africa," Ms Carol Bellamy, the executive director of the UN Children's Fund, says. "The grandparents who in so many cases are taking care of their orphaned grandchildren have limited resources."
The plight of orphans is the subject of a day-long seminar that includes Ms Hillary Rodham Clinton; the former New York Mayor, Mr David Dinkins; Queen Noor of Jordan; and basketball star Magic Johnson, who announced in 1991 he was HIV-positive.
Orphans, the report says, run greater risks of being malnourished and being denied education.