The global death toll from AIDS was 2.6 million last year alone. By the end of 1999, according to estimates from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of people living with HIV grew to 33.6 million worldwide.
Cyclones, floods, famine, malaria, tuberculosis, wars take many lives, and leave many vulnerable children behind. However, the magnitude of the AIDS pandemic exceeds any other cataclysm. On one hand, HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) does not respect children, and at the end of 1999, 3.6 million children (<15 years of age) around the world had died due to HIV/AIDS, and another 1.2 million was living with HIV/AIDS.
On the other hand, the number of AIDS orphans is believed to far outstrip the number of children orphaned by other causes. It is estimated that AIDS has already orphaned 11.2 million children since the epidemic was recognized in 1981. According to UNAIDS, by the end of the year 2000, 13 million children will have lost their mother or both parents to AIDS. This cumulative figure includes orphans who have since died, as well as those who are no longer under age 15. There may be 30 million more by 2010. "For every adult that dies, four or five children are left behind," UNAIDS director Peter Piot says. More children have been orphaned by AIDS than people who have developed AIDS. Orphans are one of the most tragic consequences of the AIDS epidemic in highly affected countries.
Already, 95 percent of all AIDS orphans are in sub-Saharan Africa, yet only a tenth of the world's population lives south of the Sahara. In some countries, AIDS has orphaned 10 percent of children under 15. In a continent already ravaged by wars and mired in poverty, AIDS is wiping out much of a generation, cutting down skilled workers, and destroying families.