18/3/2005
UNICEF Appeals On Behalf Of Zimbabwe’s Children

UNICEF has appealed for help for Zimbabwe the country with the world’s fastest rise in child mortality and the fourth highest HIV/AIDS prevalence. “Every day children in Zimbabwe are dying of HIV/AIDS, every day children are becoming infected, orphaned and forced to leave school to care for sick parents,” UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said this week. “Donors are properly concerned about governance and human rights in Zimbabwe, but by withholding desperately needed support for basic health care and education, they are also missing an opportunity to engage in a positive way at a grassroots level. I think we could all do better for the children of Zimbabwe.”

Zimbabwe receives $4 per year in donor spending per HIV-infected person, UNICEF said, while Eritrea receives $802, Uganda $319, Zambia $187 and Namibia, $101. More could be done with more funding, however, to lower the present statistic that a child dies every 15 minutes from HIV/AIDS and the overall under-5 mortality rate has risen 50 per cent since 1990 to one death for every eight births. Zimbabwe is also the only African country levying a tax of 3 per cent to mobilise domestic resources for fighting HIV/AIDS and where over 100 babies become HIV-positive every day and one in five children are already orphaned.

“We at UNICEF believe that both the Government of Zimbabwe and the international community must work on resolving this desperate situation. There is no excuse for letting the children of this country suffer without trying to find solutions to help them,” Ms. Bellamy said.