CCN Orphan and Vulnerable Children Center

CCN Orphan and Vulnerable Children

Needs your help to help themselves.

The situation for children worldwide remains deeply distressing. The global economic crisis is making more children vulnerable and constraining the availability of resources to help them. this is due to sobering statistical summary of the effects of poverty, bad governance, conflict, disaster and disease on children. For example, an estimated:

The majority of children who are refugees, internally displaced, living on the streets or in institutions, associated with armed groups, vulnerable to trafficking and child labor, or suffering the effects of HIV/AIDS tend to have one thing in common: extreme poverty. The report asserts that poverty is a more consistent predictor of children's vulnerability than orphanhood.

The number one issue that we hear from people living with HIV and AIDS and their families is lack of food and the money to purchase it. The chronic and debilitating progression from HIV infection to full blown AIDS (if untreated or treated late) accompanied by loss of work and income while seeking treatment leads to hunger, poor nutrition, and food insecurity, When HIV meets hunger, it undermines a household’s ability to provide for basic needs because HIV-infected adults may be unable to work, reducing food production and /or earnings, even healthy families members, particularly women, are often forced to stop working to care for the sick relatives, further reducing income for food, and the household may have difficulty paying for nutritional support. As a result of this HIV-to –poverty or poverty-to HIV Cycle, the quality of diet diminishes for both the PLHIV and other household members. . According to UNAIDS, the joint United Nations on HIV/AIDS, AIDS has created more than 13 million orphans worldwide. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) estimates that this number will rise to 40 million by 2010. This increasing number of Orphans will have social ramifications in Nigeria if not addressed now, and with increasing number of parents dying, orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in AIDS affected areas tend to receive inadequate foods and nutrition Many of the people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa live in communities that are extremely poor and often food –insecure, Indeed there is a complex relationship between food insecurity and HIV/AIDS. As people become sick with AIDS, they are less able to earn income for themselves and their families. Poverty and hunger can also lead to high-risk behaviors such as transactional sex, fueling transmission of the virus. The virus itself has an effect on metabolism, and can cause progressive wasting. On the other hand, evidence indicates that adequate nutrition, along with intervention such as cotrimoxizole, clean water, and malaria prevention, can help delay the onset of disease and the need for antiretroviral treatment. One of the essential areas to solve these problems therefore is to provide support for food and nutrition for children affected by HIV and to communities and households caring for children affected by HIV incorporating nutritional assessments and counseling; micronutrient supplementation, and direct food support programs.