A boy assists his mother dying of AIDS

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December 6, 1999
Web posted at: 4:22 p.m. EST (2122 GMT)

(CNN) -- A United Nations report shattered notions that the AIDS epidemic is subsiding worldwide and raised an even more alarming specter: the effect of the disease on children and implications for the future in parts of the world.

The report contains dire predictions, particularly for Africa, where experts say the impact, present and future, of millions of children orphaned by AIDS and abandoned is tearing at the very fabric of the entire continent.

According to the new report by UNICEF and UNAIDS, Africa has been overwhelmed by AIDS orphans -- more than 10 million. The epidemic has yet to peak, and the numbers are expected to grow massively. In Zambia alone, more than 360,000 children -- one in 10 of the total population -- have lost either their mother or both parents to AIDS.

With resources already stretched to the breaking point, many of these Third World countries -- with the focus in eastern and southern Africa -- have been forced to leave millions of these youngsters to fend for themselves. Poor, malnourished, uneducated and unwanted, they represent a social plague yet to come.

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Impact on children worse than decades of war

Sources say the social indicators for infant mortality and malnutrition in many of these countries is equivalent to countries that have been at war for 10 or more years.

The U.N. report said 33 million people worldwide are currently living with AIDS. The overwhelming majority are in Africa. Subsequently, this is where the majority of orphans are found. With nowhere else to go, thousands, for example, have flooded the streets of Zambia's capital Lusaka.

Typical is the hopelessness of 14-year-old Simon Kapampa, who scrounges the streets of Lusaka in quest of survival. "We don't really like staying here," he said. "and now that the rains are about to come, it's tougher. Sometimes you have older children coming at us with screwdrivers, threatening violence. So whatever money we have, we got to give them. It's not a good life."

U.N. officials believe the plight of Kapampa and millions like him is a time bomb.

While sub-Saharan Africa is the focus of current fears, it is not the only part of the world that last year registered an increase in HIV infections. The highest rate of growth was said to be in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where the number of people infected this year jumped by one-third.