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AIDS will orphan 44m children by 2010
DURBAN. South Africa. July 14: Tens of millions of children will be orphaned by AIDS over the next decade, creating an unprecedented humanitarian tragedy that will linger for decades, according to new estimates published yesterday, reports AFP.
A US study released at the 13th International AIDS Conference here predicted that by 2010, there will be 44 million children aged under 15 who will have lost one or both parents from AIDS or other causes.
"The HIV/AIDS pandemic is producing orphans on a scale unrivalled in world history." said the report, compilled by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
"Our experience with orphaning as a social problem Is limited Historically, large-scale orphaning has been a sporadic. short-term problem caused by war. famine or disease.
"AIDS has transformed It into a long-term chronic problem that will extend through the first third of this century.
The overwhelming majority of the orphans will be in sub-Saharan Africa, which for the past two years has seen a catastrophic increase In HIV Infec-
tion. In at least eight countries in this region, between 20 and 35 percent of children under 15 have lost one or both parents.
The USAID figures suggest the AIDS orphan crisis may be far worse than an estimate issued less than a month ago by the UN agency UNAIDS.
UNAIDS put the current number of orphans at 13.2 million globally, whereas USAID put the 2000 tally at 34.6 million in 34 developing countries. The USAID definition includes parental deaths from causes other than AIDS, although the disease is by far the biggest single killer Nether of these sets of figures includes HIV-positive infants and children.
John Williamson, co-author of the USAID report, told a press conference that AIDS was changing the social landscape" in some countries.
The death of parents Is a risk to children's health, safety and survival, exposing them to psychological trauma, abuse, exploitation and malnutrition. The burden especially falls on older children, who have to abandon their schooling in order to take care of their brothers and sisters.
Another report says, the world's pharmaceutical Indus-
try. cast as the villain al the AIDS Conference here because of Its high AIDS drug prices, takes In some 400 billion dollars a year, far more than the revenue of many developing countries.
The industry's sales to Africa, home to more than 70 percent of the world's 34.3 million HIV-sufferers. represent only 1.3 percent of its Income, or 3.5 billion dollars, against 100 billion In Europe and 169 billion in North America, according to figures given by Richard Laing of the University of Boston in Massachusetts.
The companies often Justify high prices by the expense of their research and development. but not all put a huge proportion of their income into R and D.
Merck, whose sales last year were worth 32 billion dollars, spent just 6.3 percent of that amount on R and D. whereas Novartis, with identical sales, spent twice that proportion — 13.1 per cent, according to US Securities and Exchange Commission figures.
They show that the companies spending the most on R and D were Amgen (27 percent of sales). Genentech (35 per cent) and Biogen (35.6 per cent).