By IANS
New York : The UN has launched a new farming manual for AIDS orphans in Africa to facilitate their rehabilitation and help them achieve long-term food security, BuaNews reported Tuesday.
The manual, compiled by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and UN World Food Programme (WFP), will deal with issues such as how to establish farm schools and teach orphans crucial skills. It is targeted at children orphaned by the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Children and youth bear the brunt of the AIDS crisis,” said Marcela Villarreal, director of FAO’s Gender, Equity and Rural Employment Division.
The manual suggests ways of setting up “life schools” as attempts “to give orphans the means and confidence to survive in an often difficult environment,” Villarreal said.
Children will be taught practical skills, such as local agricultural skills, and how to protect themselves against HIV and AIDS and other diseases.
In sub-Saharan Africa, there are over 40 million orphans, with some 11.4 million of them having lost their parents to AIDS.
The programme has targeted over 7,000 youths in 11 African countries, namely Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe since 2004.
WFP supplies key food support and forms an essential part of the initiative.
“Providing a nutritional meal to children in the schools is both an incentive for them to attend lessons and boosts them to participate actively,” said Robin Jackson, chief of WFP’s HIV and AIDS service.
Earlier this year, the UN had reported that countries in sub-Saharan Africa had dramatically improved access to HIV and AIDS treatment for citizens over the past three years.
According to the UN report more than 28 percent of people received HIV treatment in Sub-Saharan Africa. The figure was only two percent three years ago.
The report released in April this year had said more than two million people living with HIV and AIDS in low and middle income countries received antiretroviral (ARV) therapy in 2006.