UNICEF goodwill envoy Angelique Kidjo urges more HIV treatment in Zimbabwe

United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Goodwill Ambassador Angelique Kidjo, has met with some of Zimbabwe's 115,000 children infected with HIV and called for more measures to help young people living with AIDS.

Every week in Zimbabwe 550 children die of an AIDS related illness and a further 565 become infected with HIV, but nationwide less than 5,000 Zimbabwean children are receiving antiretroviral treatment, according to UNICEF. Zimbabwe, which is currently facing 1,000 inflation and one of the world's highest HIV rates, also suffers the worst rises in child mortality globally.

Ms. Kidjo, a three-time Grammy nominated singer from Benin, visited the Harare Children's Hospital on Friday to spend her afternoon with some of Zimbabwe's most vulnerable children. There she paid particular attention to those infected with HIV.

“The stories of these children are both heartbreaking and inspiring,” said Ms. Kidjo. “They are living in pain, they are often orphaned, and the world seems more interested in their country's politics than these children's plight,” she added.

The Goodwill Ambassador said proper treatment would help the children to thrive. “Certainly with the drugs their peers in the developing world have access to, they can be the country's next teachers and doctors,” she said.

UNICEF is currently embarking on a massive programme with Zimbabwe's Ministry of Health and Child Welfare to improve the health, education, protection and nutrition of the country's orphans and vulnerable children, but life-saving drugs remain in desperately short supply.

“The vast majority of Zimbabwe's 115,000 children who are HIV-positive could have been spared this immense burden. They contracted the virus through mother-to-child-transmission,” said UNICEF's Representative in Zimbabwe, Dr. Festo Kavishe. “The world has the drugs that prevent this and yet less than 7 per cent of Zimbabwe's HIV-positive pregnant women receive them.”