A maternal orphan was 12 years old when her father remarried and
sent her to live with her grandmother. When her grandmother sold her into
sex work, she worked t for a year until she was caught in a police
raid. The owner of the brothel she was working for, taken into custody for
running a sex racket and sent to a remand home, framed her. At 14,
after seeing over 1,500 clients, she learned she was HIV positive.

HIV orphans
Orphaned children are vulnerable to HIV because they are often pushed
by circumstances into high-risk behavior. Often stigmatized, they may
be ill treated by their guardians, and dispossessed of their inheritance
and property or worse driven to hard lab our, sex work, and life on the
streets.
The most cost-effective way of containing HIV in children is
prevention of mother-to-child transmission.
Looking ahead
As the number of HIV positive people in World increases, so will the
number of children orphaned by the virus. Critical to an effective
response will be country-relevant education and life-skills provision in
community-based and home-based care programmed. These will enable
children to remain in a safe environment, create awareness in the community,
help reduce stigma and prevent infection in adults.
It remains up to the government and policy makers to design,
implement and evaluate a programmed that sufficiently addresses the HIV
epidemic in children.
Let think about it at TORONTO