Integrated Regional Information Networks - August 27, 2002

Extended families, the last line of defence for the poor, are under pressure in Zambia. Households are stretched by the increasing numbers of AIDS orphans, and the impact of the current food crisis in which 2.3 million people are in need of food aid.

Among the urban poor in the capital Lusaka, WFP has identified 21,000 families caring for AIDS orphans or "vulnerable children". Nationally, there are an estimated 572,000 children orphaned by AIDS. With an HIV infection rate of more than 20 percent of adults, the number of AIDS orphans is expected to rise for at least the next decade due to the lag between infection and the death of parents and guardians.

"It's quite shocking when you find that 85 percent of families in the [impoverished] peri-urban compounds of Lusaka are looking after orphans," WFP programme officer Angelina Rudakubana told IRIN.

More than 65 percent of children orphaned in Zambia are orphaned as a result of AIDS. They are at a greater risk of malnutrition, illness, abuse, child labour and sexual exploitation than children orphaned by other causes. They also suffer the stigma and discrimination often associated with HIV/AIDS.

"Extended families take in the overwhelming majority of orphans who lose both parents. In many cases, orphaned siblings are sent to different households and experience a second profound loss through their separation. Many foster families are poor and have to stretch already inadequate resources to provide for both the orphans and their own children," said a recent report, 'Children on the Brink', by the UN children's agency UNICEF.

The rise in urban food prices in Zambia, following two consecutive poor harvests, has deepened the financial stress that poor households face. A 25-kg bag of maize meal, the staple food, has almost doubled in price over the past three months from US $4.30 to US $7.60.

"You can enter some houses and find there is nothing there, the children haven't eaten anything all day ... Mealie [maize] meal is often the only source of food.

There's no protein, it's just carbohydrates, and the quantity is not enough," Rudakubana said. The impact of HIV/AIDS has meant that it was not unusual to find 18 children in one household, she added.

In a situation of scarcity, orphans in extended families are often the first to be pulled out of school, either to save money or to provide labour. The double tragedy is that studies have shown that education, particularly of girl children, is critical in fighting the spread of HIV.

"The first thing that strikes you when you get into the compounds is the number of kids in the compounds who should be in school ... It's a poverty issue, people have been retrenched by privatisation, people are not working because they are ill," Rudakubana said.

WFP's intervention to support both AIDS-affected families and keep orphans in class would involve a meal of high-energy biscuits to the children at school, in addition to special rations for households looking after terminally-ill members.

The WFP school feeding programme, planned for October, would be implemented by NGO partners in the community schools in Lusaka that have sprung up in poor neighbourhoods as a result of the failure of the state education system to keep pace with demand.

The programme would later be extended to the southern city of Livingstone, Ndola in the central copperbelt district, and Chipata in the east, Rudukabana said.
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