How your support helps

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Children are missing clean, safe water and sanitation, and adequate nutrition
Your monthly donation of $20 can feed a child orphaned by AIDS in China.

In the worst-affected countries, children affected by HIV/AIDS are increasingly missing out on other essentials - safe water and sanitation, proper infant feeding practices and nutritional support - that can help them survive, develop and grow.

Children living with HIV have higher nutritional requirements than others. Malnutrition can weaken the immune system and allow HIV infection to progress much more quickly to AIDS-related illness than it would in a well nourished child.

Yet just when children need food most, its availability can drop dramatically in HIV-affected households as adults become ill, are unable to work and have less capacity to grow food. Ailing farmers are less able to work the land and pass on their knowledge to their children, eroding the productivity of current and future generations.

Children are missing health services
$37 can cover the monthly hygiene and sanitation costs of a day-care centre for HIV-positive children in the Ukraine

In sub-Saharan Africa, hospitals are being overwhelmed with caring for AIDS-affected patients, health systems are further undermined by the loss of staff and many doctors and nurses, faced with low pay and poor working conditions, are seeking jobs in industrialized countries.

Some developing countries have attempted to finance health care through the introduction of user fees for health services. These fees often restrict poor people's access to vital prevention, treatment and care, and push HIV/AIDS-affected households deeper into poverty. Several countries that have abolished user fees have seen an increase in the numbers of people attending health centres. This also helps boost prevention, treatment, care and support for children and adolescents affected by HIV/AIDS.

Children are missing education
Your gift of $100 can provide a year's worth of school materials, and daily hot meals, for two children orphaned by AIDS in Malawi.

In the worst-affected countries, HIV/AIDS is disrupting the demand for education, the supply of teachers, the resources available for schools and the quality of teaching. Teachers who are not themselves living with HIV may miss work because they are caring for sick relatives. Their morale often falls as colleagues are lost to AIDS and working conditions deteriorate.

For the poorest households where the proportion of spending allocated to education is the highest, school fees and the cost of uniforms and educational materials can be prohibitive. As the disease spreads, children are in danger of missing out on the knowledge and confidence necessary to protect themselves and prepare for a full and productive life.

Children are missing the chance to start life free of HIV
In Guatemala, $375 can provide the entire range of services to an HIV-positive woman to prevent transmission of HIV from herself to her infant.

Without prevention measures, about 35 per cent of children born to HIV-positive women will contract the virus. Every year an estimated 300,000 children under the age of five die of AIDS-related illness.

Children under 15 account for 1 in every 6 global AIDS-related deaths, but they are rarely mentioned in global surveys of the pandemic.