AEGiS-AP: Winfrey Publicizes AIDS Crisis in Africa

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Winfrey Publicizes AIDS Crisis in Africa

Associated Press - Saturday, December 21, 2002

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- American television host Oprah Winfrey cuddled South African children whose parents died from AIDS and promised to use her name to help humanize the pandemic that has ravaged sub-Saharan Africa.

Winfrey, who has been traveling in South Africa for the last three weeks, said in an interview published in the Saturday Star that she feels a "higher calling" to raise international awareness of the plight of the children who are losing parents and dying of the disease themselves.

"What happens to a generation of children left to fend for themselves? Unless someone does something now the orphans will change the face of this country and the continent," Winfrey said.

In a photograph on the front page of the Saturday Star, a visibly moved Winfrey stands with her hand covering her face at the bedside of a woman dying of AIDS, who was attended by her young daughter.

Anti-AIDS drugs are not available in South African public hospitals, and Winfrey said she was taken aback that the woman did not have access to treatment.

"I felt angry that this mother has to suffer, that this little girl will not have a mother," she said.

Winfrey's foundation distributed $7 million worth of Christmas gifts to some 50,000 South African children duringing to UNAIDS, the U.N.'s AIDS agency.

South Africa has more HIV positive people than any other country in the world.

Figures released by the government more than two years ago showed that 4.7 million people - one in nine - were infected, and the figure today is believed to be higher.

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