UNICEF focuses attention on crisis

UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Carol Bellamy has arrived in Southern Africa to focus attention on the humanitarian crisis in the region, the agency said on Thursday. Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe were "battling a lethal mix" of food shortages and HIV/AIDS, a UNICEF statement said. "About one in four adults in the six countries now live with HIV or AIDS; increasing deaths and sickness have ground social safety nets way below the reach of poor households. The outlook for children is particularly bleak: the six countries are home to 2.35 million children who have lost one or both parents to AIDS, and 600,000 children under 15 who are HIV positive themselves," UNICEF added. Bellamy highlighted the effect of the crisis on women and children. "Women are the lifeline of these southern African communities. They put the food on the table, and they're the ones that keep families going during such crises. They've been hit hardest by HIV and they're overwhelmingly taking on the burden of caring for the young, the old, the sick and the dying. If we reach women, we reach their children, the whole family, and the wider community. To quote the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan: to save Africa, we must save her women," Bellamy was quoted as saying. Her visit to the region was crucial as global attention was focussed on the conflict in Iraq while the humanitarian crisis in Southern Africa was "reshaping the lives of millions of children and women, far beyond the lenses of most cameras", UNICEF noted. Bellamy said an urgent response was required to address not only the immediate needs of women, but also long-term underlying structural barriers and inequities, pervasive sexual violence and abuse, limited access to productive assets, and destructive social norms that were fuelling the HIV/AIDS epidemic. On Thursday, UNICEF released the findings of its first comprehensive review of nutritional surveys in the six affected countries, which showed that a further deterioration in the nutritional status of young children throughout Southern Africa had been averted. However, it was found that certain groups of children, specifically those aged under three and orphans, were far more vulnerable to the "lethal impact" of drought and HIV/AIDS. "This major status report on children gives us the first indications that humanitarian assistance - specifically the combination of emergency food, safe and clean water, vitamin A supplementation and childhood immunisation - has stemmed any dramatic decline in child malnutrition throughout Southern Africa," Urban Jonsson, UNICEF Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa, was quoted as saying.