Ahmed Kasawala doesn’t know the warmth of his mother’s embrace; she died before he turned two, leaving him to the frail arms of his grandmother.
“I pray to Allah everyday to forgive us. Miriam was a good girl. I think she got it from the blood they gave her when she was in hospital,” says the elderly Kasawala, groping for some way to excuse a condition that carries so much stigma: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, AIDS.
In 2007, an estimated 33.2 million people lived with the disease worldwide, and it killed an estimated 2.1 million people, including 330,000 children, according to UNAIDS.
Regardless of how she contracted the HIV virus that causes AIDS, Miriam, 24, left behind three children.
“I don’t know how we will live once my eyes fail me,” says the grandmother, adding that she feel bad she does not have the energy to play with the three year old. “I am alive and my daughter is dead. Why should the old survive and the young die? The world is turned upside down. Instead of my child taking care of me, I watched her die, and now I don’t know how to take care of her child. His sisters are young, they cook, but they can barely care for themselves.”
Babies strapped to the back of 7 to 10-year-old siblings is a common sight in Malawi, where 13 percent of 7.3 million Malawian children under the age of 18 have lost their parents, mainly as a result of AIDS.
Africa is one of the most AIDS- ravaged regions of the world. Around 50 to 60 percent of orphans in Malawi, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe currently live with their grandparents, according to Help Age International. The ageing grandparents find their new provider role challenging at a time in their lives when they are in dire need of care themselves.
A 2003 study by the development ministry and the University of Malawi noted that 83 percent of the population, particularly in rural areas, “has no form of social protection. They are income insecure. There is therefore a need for a non-contributory pension as a significant component of old age income security.”
The government has launched a poverty-relief scheme, aimed at the poorest 10 percent of households. In Mchinji District, 3,094 people were provided monthly cash transfers that benefited about 14,332 people, in the 2006 pilot.
Most of the recipients were elderly people with young dependents running households with no household members between the ages of 19 and 64. This is a clear indication of the way AIDS has decimated Malawian family structures and burdened the elderly with the task of raising infants.
Who supports the children caught in the cross hairs of this crisis?
http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/aids-africa/projects-by-country/aids-malawi-africa.htm
http://www.quest4change.org/projects/africa-projects/malawi-orphan-and-community-project.html
How is the government planning to keep track that the money is being used for the antiretroviral .
How is the government planning to keep track that the money is being used for the antiretroviral .