AIDS orphans increase in West Africa

Sub-Saharan African children account for 90 percent of the world's eight million AIDS orphans, UNICEF says in its 1999 `Progress of Nations' report issued worldwide on Thursday. "The number of orphans, especially in Africa, represents nothing less than an emergency situation - requiring an urgent intervention," Rima Salah, the UNICEF regional director for West and Central Africa, said in Abidjan. In Nigeria, the number of AIDS orphans has increased from 90,000 to 350,000 between 1994 and 1997. The number of orphans trebled in Benin, Cameroon, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Mauritania, Mali and Niger. Socially isolated because of the stigma of AIDS, these children are less likely to be immunised, more likely to be malnourished and more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation than other children, the report says. It also says that teenage girls remain at greatest risk of suffering from AIDS. Half of the 5.8 million infections identified in 1998 were in the 15-19 age bracket. A study in Gabon reveals that 7 percent of pregnant teenage girls are infected, while the rate is double for Cote d'Ivoire. However, the report says, some countries have managed to stem the spread of the virus through educational programmes aimed at young people. In Senegal, the use of condoms with "non-regular" partners under the age of 25 rose from 5 percent in 1990 to 60 percent in 1997.