Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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UN Integrated Regional Information Networks - October 5, 2001
"These children should not be sent away to orphanages or boarding schools, because being lonely only adds to trauma," Tobias Odero of Christian Children's Fund, an NGO which helps Kenyan AIDS orphans with funds and morale-boosting, was quoted as saying. "When the siblings are together," he went on, "they feel warmth. They can use each other for support and share burdens. If they are separated, they are weak. They lose their roots."
In Kenya, the large number of people dying from HIV/AIDS has made it difficult for relatives, who would traditionally take orphaned children in, to help. Aid groups have been neglecting this aspect of the epidemic, Roselyne Okumu, who heads a Kenyan social workers' association and works with the NGO Kibera Community Self-Help Project, was reported as saying. "We have been so busy dealing with the infected that we almost don't have the time for the affected," Okumu said. "We are left with orphans hawking water or selling toilet paper on the streets so their brothers and sisters don't starve. And relatives so immune to the catastrophe that their hearts have been closed"
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