BuaNews (Tshwane)
11 December 2007
New York — The United Nations has launched a new manual, set to teach HIV and AIDS orphans in Africa, farming skills which may be key for their survival.
The manual, compiled by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and UN World Food Programme (WFP) will deal with issues such as how to establish farm schools and teach orphans crucial skills.
It is targeted at children orphaned by the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa..
"Children and youth bare the heaviest burden of the AIDS crisis," said Marcela Villarreal, Director of FAO's Gender, Equity and Rural Employment Division.
The new manual advises on how to create a Junior Farmer Field and Life School to educate children on how to create sustainable livelihoods and long-term food security.
"The schools are an attempt to give orphans the means and confidence to survive in an often difficult environment," Ms Villarreal noted.
Children will be taught practical skills such as local agricultural skills that may not have been passed down due to their parents' deaths, but also how to protect themselves against HIV and AIDS and other diseases.
In sub-Saharan Africa, there are over 40 million orphans, with some 11.4 million of them having lost their parents due to AIDS.
The programme has targeted over 7 000 youth in 11 African countries such as Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe since 2004.
WFP <http://www.wfp.org/english/?ModuleID=137&Key=2701> supplies key food support and forms an essential part of the initiative.
"Providing a nutritional meal to children in the schools is both an incentive for them to attend lessons and gives them an energy boost to participate actively," said Robin Jackson, Chief of WFP's HIV and AIDS service.
Earlier this year the UN reported that countries in sub-Saharan Africa had dramatically improved access to HIV and AIDS treatment for citizens over the past three years
The UN report entitled "Towards universal access - scaling up priority HIV and AIDS interventions in the health sector" is a joint effort from the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Joint UN Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).
It found that in sub-Saharan Africa, about 28 percent of people received HIV treatment, a huge improvement compared to 2 percent three years earlier.
According to the report released in April more than two million people living with HIV and AIDS in low and middle income countries received antiretroviral (ARV) therapy in 2006.
This is a 54 percent increase over the 1.3 million people on treatment, a year earlier in those countries.
Progress was also being made in other regions, such as North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, said the report.
In 2005, UNICEF, UNAIDS and other partners launched the Unite for Children, Unite against AIDS campaign.
The campaign targets four key areas namely prevention of mother to child transmission; treatment of paediatric AIDS; education programmes for prevention and support for orphans and vulnerable children.
This was in response to the plight of many children who were missing out on life-saving treatment and access to other essential services.
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