[pronut-hiv] Ethiopia: Poverty Limiting Treatment Options for HIV-Positive Children

["ProNut-HIV" <pronut-hiv@healthnet.org>]

Ethiopia: Poverty Limiting Treatment Options for HIV-Positive Children
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks 
June 21, 2006
Addis Ababa

With an estimated 2.6 million children orphaned by HIV/AIDS over the
last decade, Ethiopia faces an uphill battle in its attempts to care for
these children.

Five-year-old Tesema Asamnew (not his real name) is one of the children
being cared for at the Abebech Gobena Child Care and Development
Organization. Abebech Gobena, founder and manager of the organisation,
remembers the day Tesema came to the home four years ago.

"This boy was abandoned in the street and found by the police, who
brought him to my organisation. He was just one-year-old at the time,"
Abebech said. "When we receive any orphaned children, they undergo HIV
testing, and Tesema was unlucky to have the virus with him."

Abebech's centre, through various partners, cares for thousands of
children across Ethiopia, 420 of whom have tested positive for the HI
virus. It provides children with basic necessities, including food and
shelter, education, skills training, psychosocial rehabilitation and
HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness.

Tesema attends school and benefits from all the services Abebech's
organisation provides. However, he has not been given life-prolonging
antiretroviral (ARV) therapy, as the organisation lacks the funding to
provide ARVs to its young clients.

Woldesemayat Tamene, the Addis Ababa HIV project coordinator for the
organisation, said the centre concentrated on providing nutritional
support to its HIV-positive children.

"The reason we are treating the AIDS orphaned children with nutrition
is that we found it difficult to start the drug because once you start
to treat the children with the drug, you can't stop it," he said. "We
are giving special care and support for those living with the virus.
Each of the children living with the virus has a baby sitter who closely
follows their health status and care."

The government officially introduced ARVs for children six months ago,
but they remain out of reach for most people caring for HIV-positive
children in desperately poor Ethiopia, where almost half of the
country's 71 million people live on less than one dollar a day.

HOPE Enterprise, another organisation working with children orphaned by
AIDS, is also using nutrition to keep HIV-positive children healthy.
"The drug has many problems. It requires special health officials and
huge money, which we cant afford now," said Mekonnen Mandefro, HIV/AIDS
coordinator of Hope.

Mandefro said if the government intended to reduce the number of
children orphaned by AIDS, it needed to start by putting more resources
towards lowering the country's 4.4 percent HIV prevalence.

"Once we are able to reduce the spread of the virus, we can control the
rising of AIDS orphaned children in the country," he said. "They are not
getting enough care and treatment because of financial constraints and
ignorance."

At the launch of a report on orphans in the capital, Addis Ababa,
recently, Alexandro Concicini, a child protection official with the
United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, noted that the number of orphans
in Ethiopia was rising at an alarming rate.

"The overall number of orphans in Ethiopia was estimated to be 4.6
million, or 13 percent of the total number of children in Ethiopia," he
said. "This figure is estimated to rise to 14.8 percent by the year
2010. In absolute terms, this is going to be the largest number of
orphans in any country in the world."

"Children orphaned by HIV/AIDS suffer from greater social isolation,
stigma, discrimination and social and emotional adjustment problems," he
added. "They are less likely to be adopted and have more difficulty in
securing employment."