African AIDS Orphans Risk Being Marginalized: Official

In Nairobi, Kenya, on May 7, All Africa Conference of Churches President Kwesi Dickson warned that Africa must help its 11 million AIDS orphans or risk their being driven to the margins of society. "The children need education, feeding and nurturing ... otherwise the option will be the emergence of a large proportion of our society who will have developed anti-social instincts because of their hard life," Dickson told the opening session of a three-day AACC conference on HIV/AIDS in Africa. "Child-headed households were rare in Africa until the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Now another genocide -- a silent genocide which happens to be HIV/AIDS -- has caused child-headed households to be an increasing phenomenon in Africa," Dickson said. He said the AIDS fight should be stepped up in rural areas, and he urged religious groups to continue their fight against the stigmatizing of AIDS patients.

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