HARARE - The National Aids Council (NAC) will next year resuscitate its funding of the Basic Education Access Module (BEAM) in order to help children orphaned by the Aids pandemic proceed to school.An official with NAC, Freeman Dube, said that the programme, which was abandoned in 2008 because of the high inflationary environment, would be back again next year.
“NAC is going to give money to BEAM. We are going to fund the programme for next year but we do not have a specific figure at the moment of how much we will give to BEAM,” said Dube.
A UNICEF report of 2009 indicates that “as many one in every four children in Zimbabwe are orphaned as a result of parents dying from AIDS-related complications. An estimated 1.3 million are orphaned and vulnerable. About 100 0000 of them live on their own, while others live with the extended family.”
Due to economic hardships many children in the country, especially those orphaned by Aids-related complications, end up as school drop-outs. The three per cent that NAC gets from taxing employees should also cater for children, but that has not been the case as it has been overwhelmed by a huge demand of drugs such as antiretroviral tablets.
A total of 1,102, 864 people are estimated to be HIV positive. 997 are adults above the age of 15, and 594,847 are females. The adult prevalence is 13.7 percent ad for children it is 2.1 percent.
Post published in: Politics