Press Release
UNICEF SAYS 14,000 CHILDREN DIE EACH YEAR DUE TO AIDS IN UGANDA
UN children's agency renews call for action as Uganda joins global "Children & AIDS" campaign
KAMPALA, 25 November 2005 - The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), today joining the Government of Uganda, UNAIDS and other partners for the national launch of the global "Children and AIDS" campaign, renewed its call to galvanise action for children and women affected by AIDS, including nearly half of the country's 2 million orphans who have lost one or both parents to AIDS.
Under the theme UNITE FOR CHILDREN UNITE AGAINST AIDS, the campaign was inaugurated here by Minister of Health Jim Muhwezi.
UNICEF Representative in Uganda, Martin Mogwanja, said that AIDS in Uganda was responsible for the deaths of 14,000 children each year and that an estimated 40 Ugandan children were being newly infected with HIV each day. "One hour from now, Uganda will have lost another child to AIDS. At least one child dies due to AIDS-related illnesses every hour, every day. This is unacceptable when we also know that new infections of children can largely be prevented and life can be prolonged with new anti-retroviral medicines," he said.
"Children are the missing face of HIV/AIDS and remain dangerously underserved by care providers and insufficiently informed by social mobilisers. As long as this continues, the numbers of children infected, dying, orphaned and left vulnerable due to AIDS in Uganda will only continue to rise," he added.
UNICEF said that while Uganda had made significant strides in combating HIV/AIDS since the 1990s, a greater commitment of resources and action was required in the priority areas of prevention and care focusing on children and adolescents, pregnant women and orphans due to AIDS. The UN children's agency said that it would renew efforts to support the Government and its partners to reduce prevalence of and vulnerability to HIV in children and young people, by increasing access and use of voluntary testing and antiretroviral treatment (ART) services; prevent transmission from infected mothers to their babies by scaling up Prevention of Parent-to-Child Transmission services to all antenatal care units, and introducing paediatric AIDS treatment services at district-level hospitals; and enabling more communities to support children affected by HIV/AIDS by improving livelihood and social services at the district level.
In Uganda, approximately 25 percent of pregnant women receive services to prevent transmission of HIV to their infant children but with interventions to care for and treat HIV-positive children lagging behind, only 10 percent of these children are accessing ART services. Mother-to-child transmission is responsible for approximately 25,000 HIV-positive newborns each year in Uganda. Of the 1.8 million known orphans in Uganda in 2002, an estimated 940,000 (or 48%) were orphaned due to AIDS. The percentage in 1995 was 42, said UNICEF.
"It is most encouraging to witness Uganda joining a growing number of countries launching this campaign for children. The campaign priorities may not be new for Uganda, but they are intended to reinforce and dramatically expand all our work on HIV/AIDS with a vision to free young lives from the backbreaking burden of HIV/AIDS and make a real difference in children's lives," added Mogwanja.
The global launch of the Children and AIDS campaign was on 25 October.
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Members of the media are invited to attend the 25 November national launch at 09.00AM, Grand Imperial Hotel, Kampala
For more information, please contact:
Chulho Hyun
Communication Officer, UNICEF Uganda
+256 (0)77 222 347
chyun@unicef.org
Anne-Lydia Sekandi
Assistant Communication Officer, UNICEF Uganda
+256 (0)77 409 016
alsekandi@unicef.org
