On global level, social help and concern about the children with AIDS have to develop in two main directions. First of all, it is necessary to make everything possible to prevent further spread of this infection on children and young people. This may include education and helping women to avoid HIV infections, helping children to avoid its medical transmission and transmission through drugs or sex. Such work has to be carried out on multileveled basis: personal, in families, or within the community in general.

The second one is helping those children and teenagers, who are already infected. It is a very serious issue, because overwhelming majority of such children is orphaned and vulnerable, or they are being grown up in families below the poverty line. Recently, many different international organizations, like UNICEF, are arranging special programs and networks of care, aiming to protect and satisfy the needs of children affected by AIDS. They provide children of African and Asian regions, where AIDS rates are extremely high (both for children and adults), with different medications, food, clothes and other articles of prime necessity.

Children With AIDS Need More Love

When dealing with the problem of children with AIDS, it is very important to take all necessary precautions against transmission of HIV from affected children to other people. Therefore, it is essential to educate the members of surrounding communities (like school teachers or parents of close friends) about such disease of the child, and provide favorable background for successful development of such a child. Of course, children affected by AIDS must always remain under intensive supervision of pediatricians and other special doctors.

Psychological aspects of the issue are frequently neglected, but they are actually among the most principal in such situations. It is extremely difficult and tragic to live with HIV, especially for a child. That is why it is vital to pay attention on numerous psychological moments when treating a child affected by AIDS. Parenting and taking care about such children is a real challenge, because it is very difficult to create good environment for proper emotional, social, moral and psychological development of these children.

The key point of this topic is to find out correct flexible strategy and behavioral approach to a child affected by AIDS. Some children need extra attention and care, but some of them do not want to be differed from their peers. Besides, parents or teachers of such children must always keep in mind their excessive vulnerability and their unusual mental reactions on issues of friendship, separation, loss, self-esteem and self-recognition, etc. The most common problems of children affected with AIDS are difficulties with socialization and suicidal thoughts, that’s why they frequently need more psychological help and support.

Children and AIDS

Issues of health and health care, both on individual and global levels, are exceptionally important for our contemporary society. At that, for decades AIDS remains among the most terrible and devastating diseases of our times, which caused numerous deaths all around the world. Nowadays, AIDS is one of the most dangerous threats to global health and welfare. That is why the problem of prevention of further spread of this epidemic is extremely topical, especially in the regions of Sub Saharan Africa, Caribbean and Asia, where the amount of infected people exceeds 8% of the population, and the number of deaths runs into millions.

Of course, AIDS affects children. According to the report of UNIADS, in 2007 about 2 million children had AIDS, but this data may not reflect the real situation due to substantial lack of HIV monitoring devices in African regions, where 80% of AIDS affected people live. This epidemic endangers health and well-being of thousands of children, especially in developing countries. Needless to say, how important it is to unite the efforts and help those young AIDS carriers, whose lives are in constant danger.

Treatment and taking care about such children require a lot of tolerance, courage and efforts, from the side of both medical specialists and parents. Children affected by AIDS have to be provided with everything necessary to feel themselves equal with their peers and grow up as usual members of our society, in all possible meanings. The main medical treatment of children affected by AIDS is prevention of getting “opportunistic infections”. Due to extending variety of medications for such infections, the amount of children’s deaths caused by these diseases (first of all, pneumonia) is recently drastically decreasing.