Hope in the AIDS epicentre

The UN's children fund, UNICEF has cited Zambia as a country of hope in Southern Africa in the battle against AIDS. In its 'State of the World's Children - 2000' report, UNICEF said: "In the grip of this calamity and against sobering odds, some Zambian's have chosen to live hopefully even as many struggle with their own poverty and difficult life circumstances. They brave a stigma by their association with AIDS and often are themselves discriminated against as they work to spare future generations from the ravages of this disease." According to the report, one in five Zambian's are HIV positive and that according to local health educators in Zambia, everyone is either affected or infected by HIV/AIDS. "Virtually everyone you meet has lost friends or relatives to AIDS," the report noted. UNICEF said that an estimated 360,000 children had lost at least one parent, most of them to AIDS. Life expectancy at birth, has dropped from 50 to 40 years since 1990, and "child mortality rates are rising to levels not seen since the early 1970's, erasing a quarter-century of progress on children's health and welfare." In UNICEF's under-five mortality rate ranking, a critical indicator of the well-being of children, Zambia has been listed at number 12 in the world, with Sierra Leone at number one. In sub-Saharan Africa, the report said, children's health continued to be under "severe threat", with an estimated 4.1 million children under the age of five dying last year, compared to 3.3 million in 1980. The report said that in Zambia, the link between disease and poverty was "particularly stark", with the country's dramatic socio-economic decline "providing fertile ground for AIDS to flourish." According to the report, young women are especially vulnerable and many succumb to the temptation of so-called "sugar daddies". It said that despite the fact that Zambia had one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world, resources have been "hamstrung" by its foreign debt. In 1998, debt servicing amounted to US $110 million, more than the government's health and education budgets combined. In a statement Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF said: "Advances in science and technology have helped us push polio to the brink of eradication and drastically reduced deaths caused by measles. At the same time, a vacuum of leadership has allowed the merciless targeting of children and women in armed conflict, the frightening transformation of AIDS into the number one killer in Africa and a devastating free-fall in development assistance to the poorest nations." Bellamy added: "If we don't seize the start of the new millennium to solve the terrifying plight faced by our children, then we are guilty of contributing to their suffering and to the wholesale abuse of their rights. The choice ours." The report also noted that of the nine countries with the highest adult HIV prevalence, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe are the most affected. In Botswana, it said that without AIDS life expectancy would have exceeded the age of 69 by 2000-2005, "now life expectancy is predicted instead to plumb to new depths to 41 years in the same period."