AFRICA'S CRISIS

Africa is facing a tragedy of enormous proportion. While the world looks on, its people and their cultures are literally disappearing. As African nations lose adults in their prime working years, orphans have no alternative but to quit school and try to provide for themselves and their younger siblings. The economic, social and political aide for the children has disintegrated, adding to an already desperate situation.

• AIDS is now the leading cause of death in Sub-Saharan Africa.
  
  
• Today 26 million Africans are living with HIV/AIDS, over 70% of the world total.
  
  
• 4 million more Africans were infected in 1999.
  
  
• 90% of the AIDS global death toll occurs in Africa.
  
  
• Over the next 5 years, 20 million more Africans will die from HIV/AIDS.
  
  
• More than 15.6 million African children have lost both parents to the AIDS virus.
  
  
• By the end of the decade, 40 million children will be orphaned in Africa.
  
  
• AIDS does not only affect sexually active adults. Of the 13 million Africans who have already died from AIDS, a fourth were children.
  
  
• An estimated 430,000 Kenyans have developed full-blown AIDS since the epidemic was first diagnosed in the East African country in the early 1980s. Today an estimated 1.5 million Kenyans are HIV positive.
  
  
• Out of the total of 83,750 reported cases of AIDS from Kenya's eight provinces, Nyanza has about 20.6 percent of the reported cases and Nyanza Province in western Kenya has the largest population of HIV-positive mothers in Kenya.
  
  
• Between 20 and 30 percent of expectant mothers in Kisumu, the center of commerce in Nyanza Province, are HIV-positive.