HIV/AIDS orphans taught to farm

A new United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) programme is helping Swaziland's HIV/AIDS orphans to feed themselves. UNICEF has begun teaching children in the country's southeast Lubumba region to grow food themselves. An estimated 35 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS in Swaziland are also affected by the country's massive food shortages. "A parent takes ill and it affects the labour capacity in the family. So you reach a point where you're losing parents and those who are left, whether it's a wife who's left or orphans who are left, don't have the capacity to grow anything," Alan Brody, UNICEF head in Swaziland, said in a statement. Brody said they were hoping the scheme would enable some of the children to develop into the skilled farmers the country so desperately needs.