Family

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Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Luke 12:6-7

It is widely accepted that there are 143 million orphans in the world. Asia is the continent with the largest number of orphans (in 2001, there were 65 million orphans in Asia) and Africa has the greatest proportion of children who are orphans.

On the continent of Africa, the country with the greatest population is Nigeria. Nigeria has 155 million people. A recent study conducted found that the number of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in Nigeria is estimated at 17.5 million, out of which 7.3 million are orphans by HIV/AIDS.

The report “Africa’s Orphaned Generations” predicted that the number of AIDS orphans would rise from an estimated eleven million in 2001 to twenty million in 2010, as a result of the high proportion of adults with HIV or AIDS and the failure to deliver antiretroviral treatment to sub-Saharan Africa. According to Unicef and UNAIDS figures for 2003, only one percent of some 29 million people in the region with HIV or AIDS were receiving this treatment.

In countries where HIV prevalence has stabilized or fallen, the numbers of orphans will remain high or rise as parents already infected continue to die from the disease.

Even in small countries such as Haiti, there were an estimated 380,000 orphans before the earthquake.

Hope is on the way.

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