Babies With Disease Abandoned by Mothers

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Babies With Disease Abandoned by Mothers

Washington Times (12/17/98) P. A15
Selsky, Andrew

An estimated 1 million children are HIV-positive in sub- Saharan Africa and there are nearly 8 million African children orphaned by the disease. The Washington Times reports that HIV-infected children are increasingly being abandoned in the region. Social welfare officials say that in Johannesburg through the first half of 1998, there were 120 abandoned babies, two-thirds of whom were infected with HIV. The Salvation Army created a 60-bed shelter for abandoned children in 1995, but the shelter now only takes children with HIV due to the large number of orphans testing positive. The government is currently subsidizing the training of foster parents, and other shelters are being developed. Many of the orphans have a chance for adoption because two-thirds of the children who test positive for HIV at birth later test negative. Those children are often then adopted or go into a foster home, while the children who test positive the second time are rarely adopted and usually die young.

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