The blog will take a 6-week break. It will be back in June this year. Thank you for your cooperation and please remember that the fight against HIV and AIDS shall be won!

Children and HIV

The term "Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC)" is used to describe all children who are judged to be vulnerable and at risk, including children affected by poverty, conflict and HIV. The term has replaced terms such as "AIDS orphan", which can be misleading as it implies that children orphaned by AIDS are themselves HIV-positive. 

Fast Facts: Children Orphaned by HIV/AIDS

15-million children orphaned by AIDS worldwide 11.6 million children are orphans in Africa. ACcording to UNICEF— Childhood under threat: the state of the world's children 2005 and Avert's Worldwide HIV & AIDS Statistics.

 

Traditionally the term "orphan" describes a child whose mother or both parents had died, but used in this way it tends to underestimate the total number of orphans or the impact of paternal death, especially within the context of the HIV epidemic. Thus, a more useful definition of an orphan is: a child under the age of 18 (some organisations use 15 instead) that has lost either one or both parents. Specifically, orphans can be:

• Maternal orphans (mother has died)
• Paternal orphans (father has died)
• Double orphans (both parents have died)

According to the Until There's A Cure Foundation, the United Nations (UN) estimates that, currently, there are 14 million AIDS orphans and that by 2010 there will be 25 million. 11.6 million of these orphans live in Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, millions of children live in households with sick and dying family members. Although not yet orphaned, these children are also severely affected by HIV and AIDS. The scale of the OVC problem is masked by the time lag between HIV infection and death. Even if all HIV infections were to stop today, it's likely that the number of orphans would continue to rise for at least the next 10 years.

Sex with a virgin is not a cure for HIV

It is widely agreed that this belief is entirely untrue. See for instance A cure for AIDS at Avert.org. The idea that having sex with a virgin will cure venereal disease predates the advent of HIV and AIDS. Although very little research has been done to establish the exact origins of this belief, the “virgin cure” myth is thought to have originated sometime in the 16th century, widely manifesting itself in the Victorian era (19th century) as a “cure” for syphilis and gonorrhoea (Earl-Taylor, Mike (2002) HIV/AIDS, the stats, the virgin cure and infant rape).




In South Africa, the earliest recorded incidence of virgin rape dates back to the end of the Second World War when returning soldiers triggered an epidemic of venereal disease in the Eastern Cape (Earl-Taylor, Mike (1999) HIV men rape virgins in search for cure).

An increase in reported child and baby rapes in the late 1990s and early 2000s lead to increased media and public attention to the issue of virgin cleansing (see for instance: Govender, Prega (1999) Child rape: A taboo within the AIDS taboo; CDC (2001) AIDS Myth Fuels South Africa's Child-Rape Scourge and IRIN (2002) Myth of the virgin cure).

Whilst these cases revealed that some South Africans do believe that having sex with a virgin will cure HIV, the extent to which this belief is responsible for the high incidence of child rape has been contested (see Jewkes, Rachel; Martin, Lorna and Loveday, Penn-Kekana (2002) The virgin cleansing myth: cases of child rape are not exotic).

The virgin myth is also thought to be linked to rape in individuals with disabilities. This stems from another misconception: that disabled individuals are not sexually active. A discussion by Nora Ellen Groce and Reshma Trasi entitled Rape of individuals with disability: AIDS and the folk belief of virgin cleansing puts this issue into context.

The trend has become rampant in Zimbabwe as most men are of the view that having sex with virgins can cure them of the virus. As such, that has led to increased cases of rape. One in every three girls are raped daily. Shockingly enough, an estimated 20 percent of rape cases are reported mainly due to fear of victimization.

Testing HIV negative after being HIV+

It is possible to get a negative test result after testing positive. But this does not mean that the person is HIV negative. Whilst a test might not have detected the virus, it is unquestionably still in the person’s system.

Testing negative after testing positive can be the result of a number of factors.

First, it is important to understand that most HIV tests do not actually test for the virus itself but instead detect antibodies – the “soldiers” a human immune system produces to fight the virus. If a person has not been infected for very long there are little or no antibodies in their system. It can take anywhere from three weeks to six months for the immune system to produce them. The period where HIV infection is undetectable is called the ‘window period’. 

Other tests measure the amount of HIV in the body’s system rather than the HIV antibodies. The viral load in the body spikes in the first three to twelve weeks of infection, this is when an HIV-positive person is most likely to infect a sexual partner.

A negative result may also be the result of ART (anti-retroviral treatment) which reduces the amount of HIV in the body. Absence of antibodies in the ‘window period’ of HIV infection and successful treatment can render HIV undetectable. It is possible for an individual to test positive for HIV even though they are, in reality HIV-negative. However this may only occur in certain cases such as if the person has been the subject of an HIV vaccine trial and therefore has HIV antibodies in their system. 

Positive tests are always followed up with a second test in order to confirm the positive result.