Henrique Almeida writes on Fri Feb 20, 2009 1:33pm GMT

LUANDA - The global financial crisis is choking aid to Africa and government spending on social programmes, forcing millions of children onto the streets of the world’s poorest continent, the Christian Children’s Fund said on Friday.
Usually associated with the slums of Latin America and the Indian subcontinent, street children are a growing phenomenon in Africa. The United Nations estimates that about one fifth of the world’s 150 million street children live in Africa.
Isam Ghanim, vice-president for Africa of the U.S.-based $300-million-a-year charity fund that helps children from around the world, urged the international community and African nations to continue spending on programmes that keep children off the streets.
“More and more people are migrating from rural areas to urban areas. You also have families that because of their economic situation and lack of housing send their children to work in the streets,” he said in an interview with Reuters.
“We call on African governments to continue to enact policies that protect children. We also call for institutional donors, especially from the West, to provide substantial amounts of appropriations for child-oriented programmes,” he said.
A persisting food crisis and rising HIV/AIDS infection rates are also fuelling an increase in the number of children who take to the streets of cities from Johannesburg to Rabat to beg, he said.
U.N. agencies say that although international food prices have fallen sharply from highs reached last year, they are still well above the levels of two years ago and have driven millions more people into poverty who now require help.
“The HIV/AIDS epidemic has resulted in millions of orphans in Africa who inevitably end up on the streets,” Ghanim said.
Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region most heavily affected by HIV, accounting for more than two-thirds of all people living with HIV globally.
Some African leaders have brushed aside fears that the global economic crisis will have a major impact on a continent that has been growing at its fastest pace in decades. But when it comes to children, Ghanim said the suffering will be huge.
“Many observers believe the impact of the crisis on African children is minimum. I disagree,” he said, noting that as African exports plunge, governments are cutting spending on social programmes aimed at improving the lives of children.
He also said that falling remittances from Europe and the United States to Africa, caused by millions of job cuts in the developed world, was also weighing on the economic well-being of African parents and their children.
“The net result of all of this means that children in African countries are getting less food,” he said.

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Project Hope for Africa’s initiative to build youth centers in Africa will greatly help to take our youth off the streets and into an environment of safety, education, entertainment, creativity and productivity. Please reach out and support this organization in their struggle to reduce the number of HIV related deaths in our young population.

great Article by CLARE NULLIS - Associated Press Writer
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — South Africa’s health minister on Tuesday promised a dramatic increase in treatment for AIDS victims to overcome the legacy of a decade of governmental denial of the epidemic.
Barbara Hogan said the government wanted to provide AIDS drugs to 1.5 million people over the next three years - up from 700,000 at present, conceding that thousands were without the treatment they desperately need.
South Africa has an estimated 5.7 million people infected with HIV - the most of any country in the world - and nearly 1,000 people die every day of AIDS-related diseases. But former President Thabo Mbeki and his health minister downplayed the crisis.

Schalk van Zuydam
AP Photo - UNAIDS chief Michel Sidibe, left, reacts with South Africa’s health minister Barbara Hogan, right, in Khayelitsha Township, South Africa, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2009. South Africa’s health minister wants to increase the number of people receiving AIDS treatment to from 700,000 to 1.5 million.

When Hogan was appointed in September, she immediately broke with the discredited policies of her predecessor who promoted garlic and lemons rather than conventional AIDS drugs.
In scenes unthinkable six months ago, AIDS activists who have filed repeated legal suits to force Mbeki to provide AIDS drugs serenaded Hogan with songs and a hospital choir outside an AIDS clinic in the township of Khayelitsha.
Hogan - a grandmotherly figure who was imprisoned during apartheid and who wore a “HIV positive” T-shirt as a show of solidarity on Tuesday- said it was “music to my ears.”
The ceremony in the sprawling township was held to mark the first foreign visit of Michel Sidibe, the new head of the United Nations’ AIDS program.
The township of half a million people is crime-infested and disease-ridden. More than 30 percent of its pregnant women have HIV - the virus which causes AIDS.
More than 6,200 cases of tuberculosis - which feeds off AIDS - were diagnosed last year, more than for the whole of the United Kingdom. But Khayelitsha also has become a standard bearer for pioneering health care.
The charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, working with local authorities, is providing AIDS medication to more than 10,000 people.
Most pregnant women are tested for the virus and receive drugs to prevent them passing on the virus to their unborn child, slashing the rate of mother to child transmission to less than 3.5 percent - the lowest in the country.
More than 1 million free condoms are issued every month in health centers and bars.
TB cure rates are among the highest in the country.
“I will try to learn from you. I will listen to you because you are the one who is leading the fight,” said Sidibe, who hails from Mali. He pledged to bring the Geneva-based UNAIDS agency closer to victims of the epidemic.
Hogan likened the township to Johannesburg’s Soweto, heartland of the anti-apartheid struggle.
“Khayelitsha has been the battleground of the fight against HIV and AIDS and of the fight against people who wanted to deny it was a serious issue,” Hogan said. “I salute you.”
Since 1996 life, expectancy in South Africa has fallen by 12 years, maternal mortality is higher than in Iraq, and three times more children under five die than in Brazil.
Sidibe, who took over as head of UNAIDS last month, said much greater community mobilization like in Khayelitsha was key to slowing the spread of the AIDS virus.
It has infected an estimated 33 million people worldwide, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
The number of new infections outstrips the number of people put on treatment. Until this trend can be reversed, countries will have to spend ever-increasing resources on AIDS drugs to keep people alive.
Sidibe appealed to donor governments not to be sidetracked by the global economic woes and to come up with the estimated $25 billion per year needed to fight the epidemic.
“We cannot let the economic crisis paralyze us,” said Sidibe. “Stimulus packages and economic adjustments should be made with a human face in mind.
“A mother should not have to choose between continuing AIDS treatment and feeding her children. We cannot let down the 4 million people on treatment and millions more in need today.”

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