Zambia Adoption

Orphans of Zambia

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1. HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates that at the end of the twentieth century, nearly 19 million people had died of AIDS around the world, leaving over 13 million orphans. (Report on the global HIV/AIDS Epidemic; UNAIDS, June 2000. pp.5-7)

2. Daily there are 14,400 people in Africa infected with HIV/AIDS. The Impending Catastrophe, Johannesburg: Abt Associates, South Africa Inc.,2000)

3. Africa has been hit the hardest with HIV/AIDS. About 70 percent of the world’s 34 million HIV-positive people live south of the Sahara desert and about 95% of the worlds AIDS orphans are African. (Ibid)

4. 23,800,000 HIV infected people in sub-Saharan Africa. (Ibid)

5. 12,350,000 AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa. (Children on the Brink, 2nd Edition, USAID, 2000)

6. United States Agency for International Development (USAID) estimates that 44 million children under 15 in 34 developing countries, will have lost one or both parents by 2110, mostly to AIDS. (Children of Aids, Africa's Orphan Crisis, p.18)

7. US Bureau of the Census, life expectancy in Zambia has reduced to 37 by 1998. It would have been 56 in a world without AIDS. (UNAIDS/WHO epidemiological fact sheet on Zambia, UNAIDS, June 1998)

8. Roughly 20 percent of Zambian adults are infected with HIV. 1 in 5 infected. (Children on the Brink, 2nd Edition, USAID, 2000, p.16)

9. The country with perhaps the second highest proportion of orphans in the world (after Rwanda) with an estimated 27 percent of children under 15 having lost their mother, father or both parents by 2000, mainly to AIDS. (Ibid)

10. In Zambia USAID estimated in 1990 9% of children under 15 had lost their mother or both parents, maybe 61% of them bereaved by AIDS. By 2000, 12% of children had lost mother or both parents, 76% to AIDS. If paternal deaths are added into the equation, nearly a third of Zambia’s children may have been affected. (Save's Malawi Office, Justin Opoku)

11. Three-quarters of all Zambian households are taking care of one or more orphans. (Ibid)

12. 90,000 street children in Lusaka in 2000, compared to 35,000 in 1991. BBC, September 15, 1999)

13. Estimated 700 HIV related deaths in Lusaka each week. (Ibid)

14. On the Copperbelt 46% of all pregnant women are HIV positive. (South Africa Sunday Times, National, August 29,1999)

15. According to Zambian Government, one half of the 10 million population will die of HIV/AIDS. (Ibid)

16. 80,000 of 400,000 babies born in Zambia each year are HIV Positive (Panos Report, 2000 UN theme group on HIV/AIDS)

17. Seventy-five percent of employees deaths in the sugar and cement industries in Zambia are due to HIV/AIDS. (Zambia National Broadcastin Company, "Open Line", January 14, 2001)

18. Every day in Zambia 300-500 people die from HIV. (Ibid)

19. 33% of all married couples in Zambia are discordant – one is HIV positive the other is not. (Ibid)

20. In 1997 there were 600 teachers who died from HIV. In 2000 there was an estimated 1,300. (EJU Bulletin, Issue 26, Jan-Mar 2001)