Emerging Issues and Challenges for Women, Young People & Infants

In badly affected countries, the socioeconomic effect of this most destructive disease is measured in declining per capita incomes, shrinking profits in labour-intensive businesses, loss of productivity from cultivated land, and deteriorating public services such as health, welfare and education, as key staff fall ill and die. AIDS undermines the future, too, as families and communities struggle with the burdens of sick people and orphaned children, building up debts and frequently having to remove children from school because of lack of funds or because the labour of even the littlest is needed to help the family survive.