Understanding HIV/AIDS
Educating and Raising HIV Awareness About This Epidemic

The latest statistics on the world epidemic of AIDS & HIV were published by
UNAIDS/WHO in July 2008, and refer to the end of 2007.

More than 25 million people have died of AIDS since 1981.

Africa has 11.6 million AIDS orphans.

At the end of 2007, women accounted for 50% of all adults living with HIV worldwide, and for 59% in sub-Saharan Africa.

Young people (under 25 years old) account for half of all new HIV infections worldwide.

In developing and transitional countries, 9.7 million people are in immediate need of life-saving AIDS drugs; of these, only 2.99 million (31%) are receiving the drugs.

Support The Bobbi Bear Project

Rescue And Uphold The Rights Of Sexually Abused Children. - Minimise Their Risk Of HIV Infection. - Help Children Towards Wholeness.

Operation Bobbi Bear exists to:

• Rescue and uphold the rights of sexually abused children in South Africa
• Minimise their risk of HIV infection in South Africa
• Help them towards wholeness.

This is important because in South Africa:

• The reported cases of child sexual abuse have increased by 400% in the past 8 - 9 years.
• In KwaZulu-Natal AIDS growth is estimated that 51% of adults between 16 and 45 years are HIV+. Since this is the perpetrator age group for sexual abuse, child victims are at risk of contracting HIV.
• Rape and abuse charge dockets are difficult to complete due to language barriers (we have 11 official languages in South Africa). The loss of facts results in cases being refused to be heard in a court of law, and the perpetrators of the crimes walk free.
• The child rape victims experience secondary abuse when giving statements and evidence and being medically examined.
• The ongoing care for child abuse victims is often inconsistent - the child becomes confused since they are required to work with many different adults.

OBJECTIVES

• To collaborate with and assist the criminal justice system to ensure the rights and safety of the child victim of sexual abuse
• To assess HIV/AIDS risk of child victim of sexual abuse at point-of-rescue, to intervene and to counsel appropriately
• Applying therapeutic methods with use of Bobbi Bear, to obtain forensic facts and evidence to assist the criminal justice process, within the best interests of the child.
• To empower and train local communities to collaborate with the criminal justice system, to ensure the rights and safety of child (Preventative Measures)
• To empower and train Child Safety Officers locally, as prototypes for national expansion, and possible inclusion into the criminal justice system
• To equip and mobilise communities to be trained in HIV/AIDS, Pre- and Post-Test Counselling and Positive Living/ Wellness Management Programmes, in order to offer spiritual and emotional support to child victim of sexual abuse.
• To increase awareness within local South African communities, with the aid of Bobbi Bear as symbol against sexual abuse and HIV/AIDS
• To train identified members within communities to be trained as community child safety officers

How can we help stop the Spread of AIDS?

“We’re dealing with a kind of contemporary apocalypse.”

THOSE words of Stephen Lewis, UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, echo the concern of many about the AIDS situation in sub-Saharan Africa.

Five million people were infected with the AIDS virus in 2003, “the largest number in any single year since the epidemic began two decades ago,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “Despite a huge global push to fight HIV in developing countries, the AIDS virus continues to infect a growing number of people and claim millions of lives each year.” According to data published by UNAIDS, an AIDS program sponsored by the United Nations and other groups, about 3 million people die from AIDS each year and more than 20 million have died since the first diagnosis of the disease in 1981. Currently, the UN agency estimates that 38 million people are infected with HIV. Sub-Saharan Africa, with 25 million cases, is the hardest-hit region, followed by South and Southeast Asia with 6.5 million infected. World-wide, nearly half of all new HIV cases are young people aged 15 to 24.

Promiscuous Sex

In this age of AIDS, promiscuous sex is unquestionably dangerous. Yet, many youths seem to view sex as little more than a harmless game. Some American youths, for example, blithely speak of “hooking up”—a harmless-sounding euphemism for casual sex. They talk about having “a friend with benefits”—a sexual partner who makes no emotional demands.

It is a know fact that childern are having orgylike parties, some suburban youths throw while their parents are at work. At one such party, a young girl announced that “she was going to have sex with all the boys there. Children as young as 12 were involved in the parties.

Particularly distressing was a report in the newspaper USA Today: “Increasing numbers of the country’s youngest teens . . . are having oral sex. . . . Kids have convinced themselves that ‘this is not really sex.’” According to one survey of 10,000 girls, “eighty percent said they are virgins, but 25% had had oral sex. And 27% described that act as ‘something you do with a guy for fun.’”

Such views on sex have made inroads elsewhere. “Asia’s youth are becoming increasingly susceptible to HIV through heterosexual relationships with many becoming sexually active at a younger age,” reports UNESCO, adding: “Teenagers are increasingly shirking their parents’ ‘Asian values’ by having premarital sex, often with multiple partners.”

Without a doubt, today’s generation of youths is a deeply troubled one.

Rape has been described as a national emergency in South Africa. A news report in the Citizen newspaper of Johannesburg stated that it “is so rampant that it overtakes every other health risk posed to this country’s women and, increasingly, to its children as well.” The same article noted: “The rape of children has doubled in recent times . . . These acts are committed seemingly in perpetuation in Africa because of the myth that an HIV carrier who rapes a virgin will be cured.”

Sexually transmitted disease (STD). There is a high rate of STDs in the region. The South African Medical Journal noted: “The presence of an STD increases the risk of HIV-1 infection 2- to 5-fold.”

It is evident that in some countries efforts are being made to deal with the disease. And for the first time, in June 2001 the United Nations General Assembly held a special conference to discuss HIV/AIDS. Will human efforts bring success? When will the deadly march of AIDS finally be halted?

The Battle Against AIDS - Protect Yourself Against Aids

HIV testing before considering marriage is a wise choice....

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