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  • Title: Rwanda. AIDS orphans: problems and solutions.
    Author: Descombes M.
    Journal: Child Worldw; 1993; 20(2-3):52-4. PubMed ID: 12179314.
    Abstract:
    An estimated 300,000 of Rwanda's population of 7.5 million are infected with HIV. This includes 130,000 women and 20,000 children. Due to AIDS-related mortality, there are an estimated 62,000 orphans in the country, with 150,000 expected by 1997. War, adverse economic conditions, and ignorance of the minimal or nonexistent risk of being infected by these children, however, constrain extended biological and foster families from accepting these orphans into their homes. These children are very much alone and need to be placed in warm, caring households. Caritas Rwanda with the help of the Rwandan Ministry of Health launched the Family Homes Project in 1992 as an extension of the organization's general program of caring for AIDS-affected families in Rwanda in place since 1989. The program offers psychological counseling and assistance with regard to food, basic medicines, the payment of school fees, and funeral expenses. Family homes are structures designed to give orphans a background as similar as possible to that of the family which they have lost. Each harbors 7-10 children typically up to age 16 cared for by a woman who is also the biological mother of some of them. Caritas buys and equips an house in the Kigali suburbs or in one of the provincial towns. The mother is then provided a budget to pay for the daily household expenses of food, clothing, maintenance, water, and electricity. HIV-positive children lead in this setting, as far as their health permits, the same life as their healthy peers. When a serious health problem arises, the orphans are treated at the medical and social center, or the hospital if needed. Caritas Rwanda plans to open a care center staffed with a nurse and an additional outside social worker for orphans who require permanent treatment. Only several hundred children are presently in the program, but Rwanda has set an objective of assisting, by 1997, 50% of its AIDS orphans.
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