[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 57 (Tuesday, March 28, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4692-S4693]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                          A CALAMITY IN AFRICA

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I have listened to the recent proposals of 
several Republican Senators for deep cuts in our foreign assistance 
program. Some of these proposals do not mention cuts specifically, but 
that is the thinly veiled consequence of what they propose. We pride 
ourselves for our generosity, but our foreign assistance accounts for 
less than 1 percent of the total Federal budget. These proposals would 
cut that even further, with the deepest cuts in the funds that go to 
help the neediest people in the world.
  I will speak at length on this subject in the coming weeks, but I 
wanted to talk briefly about what are talking about if these proposals 
gain support.
  At the same time that Republicans are pushing for drastic reductions 
in aid to needy American children and families, they would have us turn 
our backs on people around the world who are even more desperate. Let 
me mention one example, that was described in the Washington Post on 
March 17.
  Uganda, once a prosperous, peaceful country, was destroyed by Idi 
Amin in the 1970's. Today, the average yearly income is $170 per 
person, and as Uganda struggles to rebuild from civil war it is being 
destroyed from within again. One of every fifteen Ugandans is HIV 
positive. Half a million Ugandan children have lost a parent to AIDS. 
By 1998, 10,000 Ugandan children will have died from AIDS, and another 
300,000 children will be infected.
  In towns like Kakuuto with 70,000 residents, 30 percent of the people 
are either infected with HIV or already suffering from AIDS. There are 
17,000 orphans in that town alone.
  The article describes a typical girl who became the head of her 
family at the age of 13, when her mother died from AIDS. AIDS had 
already killed her father. She now cares for her four younger brothers 
and sisters.
  In 1990 I went to Uganda, and I saw the devastation caused by AIDS. I 
saw the heroic efforts of people there, everyday people, trying to 
fight the epidemic, a battle they could not possibly win without the 
help of countries like ours.
  The article goes on to describe similar stories in Kenya, where 
Father Angelo D'Agostino, a Jesuit priest and a personal friend of 
mine, founded a home in Nairobi for AIDS orphans. He gets calls seeking 
a home for 100 AIDS babies every month. He has room for only 80 
children, many of whom watched their parents die.
  Mr. President, there are more rescissions coming from the House, and 
there are proposals to cut the foreign assistance program. Meanwhile, 
in Africa there are 10 million people infected with HIV, and the number 
continues to climb. Close to a million and a half are children. Many of 
the HIV infections were spread by sexually transmitted diseases that 
are common wherever there is poverty. These diseases are common in our 
own country, but here we have the vaccines or medicines to cure them. 
There they do not, and they become HIV positive, and they die.
  There is no cure for AIDS. Would those who would cut the meager funds 
we spend to fight AIDS in places like Uganda, or India where it is 
spreading like wildfire among a population of a billion people, have us 
seal our borders? Tell future generations of Americans that if they 
leave our shores they cannot return?
  Mr. President, this is one of a dozen examples I could mention of 
what will happen if we cut these foreign assistance programs. It makes 
a great press release today. We might just as well be sentencing our 
children and grandchildren to death.
  I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Mar. 17, 1995]

   African AIDS Epidemic Creating a Society of Orphans--Hundreds of 
 Thousands of Children Left Parentless as Scourge Sweeps the Continent

                          (By Stephen Buckley)

       Kakuuto, Uganda.--Elizabeth Nakaweesi, 17, became head of 
     her household at 13.
       In 1989, her mother died of AIDS. In 1991, AIDS killed her 
     father. That left Elizabeth to care for her four brothers and 
     sisters, now aged 10 to 15.
       Instead of spending her days in school, she spends them 
     making straw mats and cultivating her family's half-acre of 
     banana trees. She makes $40 a year.
       ``It is painful to have no parents,'' Elizabeth said 
     recently, sitting in her family's battered clay hut. ``If 
     they were here, they 
     [[Page S4693]]  would take care of us: we would have the 
     things we do not have.''
       Nakaweesi's plight has become a familiar one in Africa, 
     where AIDS has left millions of children without parents and 
     has afflicted thousands of others who contracted the AIDS 
     virus through their mothers.
       Statistics on the impact of AIDS among African children are 
     sketchy but nonetheless grim. UNICEF predicts that by 1999, 
     up to 5 million African children will have lost their mothers 
     to AIDS. Of the 9.5 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who 
     either have the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)--which 
     causes AIDS--or the disease itself, an estimated 1.3 million 
     are children.
       AIDS has ravaged the continent in part because of cultural 
     mores that assent to men having simultaneous sexual 
     partnerships with more than one woman. Researchers also have 
     found that a high rate of nonfatal sexually transmitted 
     diseases among both genders has made Africans more vulnerable 
     to HIV.
       AIDS specialists fear that the impact of the disease on 
     children will slash school enrollments, roll back gains in 
     infant morality rates and further tax family structures 
     already shattered by political and economic crises in many 
     African countries.
       Uganda's AIDS crisis is among the most urgent in Africa, as 
     1.5 million of the nation's population of 17 million are HIV-
     positive. An estimated 519,000 Ugandan children have lost at 
     least one parent to AIDS, and the government reports that by 
     1998 about 150,000 children will have died of it and another 
     300,000 will be infected.
       ``What we have seen is staggering,'' said Omwony Ojwok, 
     director of the Uganda AIDS Commission. ``The families in 
     particular are simply at a breaking point. You have some 
     adults with 10 orphans in their house, plus their own 
     children. Eventually, you run out of adults to take care of 
     the children.''
       The town of Kakuuto, three hours west of Kampala, has been 
     hit especially hard. An estimated 30 percent of its 70,000 
     residents are either HIV-positive or have AIDS. Relief 
     workers estimate that there are 17,000 orphans. Some are left 
     on their own, but many more live with grandparents who often 
     are too old to provide the economic '' and emotional security 
     of a mother and father.
       Alandrena Nakabiito, 62, was left with six orphans, ages 5 
     to 13, when two relatives died of AIDS in the early 1990s. 
     Nakabiito, who reared four of her own children, said that she 
     never expected to be cast in this role.
       ``I never thought of it,'' she said, waving her arms in her 
     dark, narrow, two-room hut. ``I built this small house for 
     myself.'' Now eight people, including Nakabiito's 72-year-old 
     sister, live there.
       Nakabiito said she makes about $60 a year, adding that she 
     would work harder on her acre of land but age has drained her 
     strength. She digs only in the morning, resting in the 
     afternoon. The slight woman, whose hands bear scars of a hard 
     farm life, said she is especially sad that she cannot help 
     Lucky Nakkazi, the 13-year-old, with her studies. Lucy can go 
     to school only because the World Vision relief organization 
     pays fees for her and about 2,500 other orphans in Kakuuto.
       ``I would try to help, but I have poor sight at night,'' 
     Nakabiito said, referring to Lucy's school work.
       Lucy attends Kakuuto Central Primary School, where 
     headmaster Kyeyune Gelazius said that 220 of his 450 students 
     have lost parents to AIDS. he predicts that within five 
     years, 75 percent of his students will be orphans. He said 
     that generally their attendance is sporadic and their 
     behavior disruptive and that they lag academically.
       ``They don't get the attention they need at home,'' said 
     Gelazius, who has seen 11 relatives die of AIDS. ``Their 
     grandparents are usually too old, and the children don't 
     respect them.''
       A study in neighboring Tanzania found that children who 
     have lost their mothers to AIDS ``have markedly lower 
     enrollment rates and, once enrolled, spend fewer hours in 
     school'' than youngsters with two parents, the World Bank 
     Research Observer reported. The same study concluded that by 
     2020 the AIDS death rate among children in Tanzania will have 
     cut primary and secondary-school enrollments by 14 and 22 
     percent, respectively.
       Doctors also fear that AIDS will wipe out improvements in 
     infant mortality rates over the past decade. For now, the 
     rate remains stable, but a 1994 World Bank report on AIDS in 
     Uganda warned: ``Because of the large numbers of women 
     carrying the virus, there are increasing numbers of infants 
     and children infected. This together with the loss of mothers 
     due to AIDS will increase infant and child mortality 
     significantly.'' At the Kakuuto offices of Doctors of the 
     World, a medical relief group, AIDS program coordinator Fred 
     Sekyewa said babies born to mothers with AIDS have a 25 to 50 
     percent chance of being infected and that one in three 
     pregnant women examined here tests HIV-positive.
       Sekyewa added that many women with AIDS have babies because 
     of cultural pressures. ``In African societies it is an 
     abomination for a woman to die without a child,'' he said. 
     ``A woman in her twenties who has AIDS will say, `I must have 
     a child now because I may die before I get the 
     opportunity.'''
       In Nairobi, Kenya, hundreds of HIV-positive children die in 
     hospitals annually after being abandoned by their mothers. 
     Three years ago, the Rev. Angelo D'Agostino, a Jesuit priest, 
     founded a home in Nairobi for such children. A surgeon and 
     psychiatrist who taught at George Washington University for 
     14 years, D'Agostino said he gets calls from hospitals and 
     social workers seeking homes for 100 AIDS babies every month.
       D'Agostino, 69, has taken in about 80 children. He said 
     that some have become healthy after receiving a steady diet 
     of nutritious meals and attention.
       ``They were born with their mother's HIV antibodies, so 
     they initially tested positive. But they never got 
     infected,'' D'Agostino said. ``So after a while, they're 
     fine. But usually these kids die of malnutrition or something 
     else in a hospital; because they once tested positive, 
     everybody gives up on them.''
       The priest said that his children, most of whom are under 
     5, often show the strains of losing their parents. They cry 
     for hours. They have nightmares. They stare into space.
       ``They talk about seeing their parents die,'' D'Agostino 
     said. ``They talk about being alone with their 10- or 12-
     year-old sibling.''
       Elizabeth Nakaweesi understands their pain. The teenager 
     said she quit school in the sixth grade to care for her young 
     siblings after her parents' deaths because ``there was nobody 
     else to do it.''
       Elizabeth's father, who died at 51, had collected taxes at 
     the local market. Her mother, who was 39, had cultivated 
     their plot of bananas, sweet potatoes and cassavas.
       Sometimes, when crops are poor and her straw mats are not 
     selling, Nakaweesi must beg neighbors for help. She said that 
     without assistance from neighbors and World Vision--which 
     pays school fees, bought her a bicycle and provides other 
     necessities--she and brothers and sisters would not survive.
       Elizabeth works hard to foster a spirit of family teamwork. 
     After her siblings return from school, everyone works in the 
     field before dinner. At supper time, one child fetches water. 
     Another finds firewood. Another picks bananas. Another puts 
     out bowls and eating utensils. Another does the cooking.
       But the teenager knows that she cannot replace her parents. 
     When she tries to speak of them, tears will in her eyes. She 
     turns her face to the wall.
       ``They must be mother and father now,'' said Grace Mayanja, 
     a staff worker with World Vision, referring to children in 
     Kakuuto left to raise siblings. ``But in their hearts, 
     they're still little girls.''
     

                          ____________________