Africa: HIV/AIDS: who cares?

News: HIV/AIDS: who cares?
Last update: 27 May 2004
Many programmes celebrate family and community-based care for orphans and vulnerable children, but few recognise that the human face of these families and communities is usually that of an older woman.
About 13 million children have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS, the vast majority in sub-Saharan Africa. New analysis of data from UNICEF and USAID-supported surveys in sub-Saharan Africa shows that:
* Nine out of ten orphans are cared for by the extended family.
* About 30 per cent of all households in sub-Saharan Africa are headed by an older person.
* In southern Africa, more than half of orphans who are not living with a surviving parent, or who have lost both parents, live with their grandparents.
* Households headed by older women are twice as likely to include orphans as those headed by older men.
* Grandparents' responsibility for orphans is increasing as the epidemic progresses.
The surveys define children as those aged below 15, and older-headed households as those headed by persons over the age of 55.
Children are often in their grandparents' care before their parents have died, since many people with AIDS return home in the final stages of their illness to be cared for by their parents, bringing their children with them.
However, the safety net provided by grandparents is stretched very thin. Older people already make up a significant proportion of the poorest, and HIV/AIDS exacerbates the extreme poverty faced by many older-headed households, compromising older carers' ability to care adequately.
At risk of infection
New data from voluntary testing centres in Uganda also highlights older people's risk of becoming infected, with one in five of those aged over 50 who came for testing being HIV-positive. International data on infection rates stops at age 49, and older people are widely ignored by HIV/AIDS prevention programmes.
Policy implications
"The findings from these data sets provide further evidence of the scale of the impact of HIV/AIDS on older people and the need to include them in policies and programmes to tackle the epidemic," says Fiona Clark, HelpAge International policy officer.
"Policy makers need to be clearer who the home and community-based carers for orphaned children are, and what resources they have, and provide them with adequate financial, social and emotional support, including direct income in the form of social protection and access to foster care grants.
"They also need to recognise that older people are at risk of infection, and that they need equitable access to HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment measures."
More information:
Visit the HelpAge International website www.helpage.org or email Fiona Clark, Policy Officer, HelpAge International [email protected]