Care and support for people living with HIV/AIDS

Report on the global HIV/AIDS epidemic – June 2000Information collected in large household surveys representative of the general populationconfirms the general assumption that children whose parents have both diedare less likely to be in school than children who are living with one or both parents(see Figure 11).Figure 11. Proportion of children aged 10-14 who are still in schoolaccording to whether their parents are alive, surveys invarious countries, 1994-1998%100908070605040302010BeninCameroonChadCôte d'IvoireMaliNigerTanzaniaTogoHaitiBoliviaGuatemalaPeruliving with one or both parentsboth parents deadSource: Demographic and Health Surveys, Macro International, USA, and UNICEF, 2000The impact of parental AIDS is not necessarily a direct one or seen only in childrenwho have already been orphaned. A child’s schooling may be temporarily interruptedby a shortage of cash occasioned by spending on a parent’s ill-health or by periodsof work in the home to help sick parents. By the time children are actually orphaned,they are likely to be over-age for their class, even if they are still in school. This wasthe case in both the Zimbabwean and Kenyan studies cited here. Being older thantheir classmates was in turn associated with a higher rate of dropping out of schoolfor a number of other reasons, including pregnancy and the need to take payingwork. Many of the marriages that led to drop-out were arranged, so it is quite possiblethat relatives or sick parents themselves saw marrying a girl off as a relativelypainless way of ensuring that she would be cared for after their death. In at least onestudy of orphans in Kenya, boys tended to give economic reasons for dropping outof primary school (64% said they could not afford fees or needed to earn cash from30