- MAPUTO, Mozambique (AP) --
For months, 13-year-old Percilia wandered the streets of Maputo, surviving
off scraps of food she begged from strangers or salvaged from garbage cans.
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- Like thousands of other children here, Percilia and her
sister, who is about 7, were left to fend for themselves when their parents
and older sister died of AIDS (news - web sites)-related complications
two years ago.
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- The government, battling food shortages and overwhelmed
by a disease that has infected one in 10 Mozambicans, does not have the
means to feed the country's growing number of AIDS orphans.
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- "We would eat food people threw away," Percilia
said tearfully, fingers tugging at a blue polka-dot dress. "Old food
didn't matter. We were hungry."
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- Percilia - whose last name was withheld - and her sister
are among the lucky few. Staff at one of the country's 40 orphanages found
them in the streets and took them in. They are now fed with the help of
the World Food Program.
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- WFP currently feeds more than 122,000 children by supporting
local groups. It hopes to reach a further 100,000 by the end of the year.
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- The plight of children like Percilia has been a theme
at two separate AIDS conferences hosted by Mozambique this week.
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- One, organized by South African financial services company
Metropolitan, aims to encourage solutions through partnerships between
the public and private sectors. A separate conference is considering ways
of mitigating the effects of HIV (news - web sites) on regional food production.
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- About 400,000 children are orphaned by AIDS. In all 1.7
million of Mozambique's 17 million people are infected with HIV, according
to government figures.
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- AIDS also is decimating the farming population of this
largely agrarian society, robbing Mozambicans of the ability to feed themselves.
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- To make matters worse, the southern African country is
suffering its lowest rainfall in 50 years. Close to 1 million people are
threatened by hunger as crops fail and food aid trickles into Africa's
fourth poorest country.
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- Traditionally, orphans here have been cared for by their
extended families. But AIDS and drought have left many families unable
to care for their own, let alone take in additional mouths to feed.
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- "Unfortunately, AIDS orphans end up at the back
of feeding lines because they are left to fend for themselves," said
Jennifer Abrahamson, of the World Food Program.
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- Fourteen-year-old Ana - whose name also was withheld
- and his 6-year-old brother, Paolo, struggle on their own in a shack on
the crowded outskirts of the capital, Maputo. Their father died four years
ago of AIDS-related complications, and their mother abandoned them, fearing
she too might have contracted the disease.
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- For a year, they survived by begging food from neighbors,
until the local aid organization Kindlimuka discovered their plight.
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- Now, Kindlimuka - "Wake Up" in the local Shangane
- supplies the children with beans, cornmeal, spaghetti and fish with the
help of the WFP. Ana is back in school, the brothers looks healthy.
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- Mozambique's cash-strapped government relies on international
organizations like WFP and the U.N. Children's Fund to help feed its AIDS
orphans.
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-
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- Government officials say they don't even have the means
to determine how many children need help.
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- "We cannot cope with the situation as it is, and
we know it will only get worse," said Sonia Romao, a co-ordinator
for the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs. UNICEF (news - web sites)
projects by 2010, the country will be home to 1.2 million orphans, 926,000
of them due to AIDS.
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- "If we do not stem the tide now, it will be nearly
impossible to feed these children in the future," said Atieno Odenyo,
a UNICEF officer in Maputo.
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- Natalie Simione, who runs Liberdade, or "Freedom,"
in Portuguese, receives a small annual grant from the government for the
orphanage that took in Percilia and her sister.
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- "We can't save them all," Simione said. "But
we will do our best with the ones we can reach."
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- - Associated Press writer Emmanuel Camillo contributed
to this report in Maputo, Mozambique
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- Copyright © 2003 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority
of The Associated Press.
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