Getting to Zero
Mpho (not her real name, but certainly a real person) is a young woman who lives in an obscure village in South Africa. When I met Mpho, she was 14 years old. Her mother was dying of AIDS and Mpho, her younger siblings and her granny were literally starving to death. Her mother was a skeleton with skin on, the children’s hair was falling out in clumps due to malnutrition and granny was suffering from severe dementia. This is the face of AIDS. Millions of people in Africa face this same situation every day.
Today is World AIDS Day. What does this mean to me? Or to you? Or to the World?Through the intervention of the organization for which I work, Mpho’s family received help, but it came too late for her mother. At the tender age of 14, Mpho became the head of a household of 4 children and a granny who needed constant care. This is the face of AIDS.Twenty million orphans live in Africa.AIDS is a debilitating, horrible disease that steals from the future and devastates the present.AIDS related deaths are more than all the earthquakes, tsunamis and other recent natural disasters - combined.Every day.This World AIDS Day, the focus is ‘Getting to Zero’.
- Zero AIDS related deaths
- Zero new HIV infections
- Zero discrimination