AIDS makes 87,000 orphans in Mozambique

About 87,000 Mozambican children have became orphans because of AIDS that killed their parents, the country's National Statistics Institute (INE) has said in a report.

The report, available here on Thursday, was presented to a recent meeting, that took place in the central province of Manica. Representatives of Mozambican public and private institutions, NGOs, and other users of statistics data attended the meeting.

According to INE delegate Amelia Nakhare, about 70,000 Mozambicans of different ages, but mostly adults, had died of AIDS by the year 2002, leaving a large number of orphaned children.

Most orphans are found in the central region of the country, where INE counted about 58,000, compared with 21,000 in the southern region, and 8,000 in the north.

She said that the central region is also leading in terms of deaths by AIDS, with 44,000, followed by the south, with 17,900 and 6,600 in the northern region.

Nakhare said that those figures can be explained by the respective HIV/AIDS prevalence rates - 16.7 percent in the central region of Mozambique, 14.8 percent in the south, and 8.4 in the north.

The Manica meeting is aiming at divulging demographic and social statistics to give the participating institutions reliable information in order to help them in their planning process.

Source: Xinhua