"Orphaning is not the only way that children may be affected by AIDS/HIV." Children on the Brink, 2004
According to the UNAIDS/ UNICEF/ USAID report, Children on the Brink 2004, children made vulnerable by AIDS/HIV include those who have an ill parent, are in poor households that have taken in orphans, who face discrimination because a family member has HIV, or who have HIV themselves.
At the end of the 2004, two million children under the age of 15 were living with HIV and 12 million were orphaned by AIDS. According to UNICEF, every 14 seconds another child is orphaned by AIDS.
In Zambia, approximately 78 percent of the country's current orphans are the result of the AIDS/HIV epidemic. It is estimated that 650,000 children in Zambia have been orphaned due to AIDS/HIV, and that this figure is likely to reach one million in the near future. Families are struggling to stay together as AIDS creates a nation of orphans in Zambia.
Children on the Brink 2004 reports that Zambia has a higher proportion of children without parents than any other country in in the study. Some 90,000 children live on the streets, the sole survivors of families wiped out by AIDS/HIV: "one of the most telling and troubling consequences of the epidemic's growing reach is the number of children it has orphaned or seriously impacted." The report estimates that the proportion of orphaned children will continue to increase for at least another 10 years.