As Nigeria`s poorly prosecuted war against HIV continues, embarrassing irresponsibility is consigning children to the ragged teeth of a ruthless disease.
What do innocent children know to make them bear the brunt of the irresponsibility of older people and the jarring complaints of a crumbling healthcare system?
The statistics damningly indicate a war disproportionately affecting children with a new report by the United Nations Children`s Fund showing that, at least, one child globally was infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) every two minutes.
According to the report not less than 300,000 children globally were newly infected with HIV in 2020 with 120,000 children dying from AIDS-related causes during the same period, or one child every five minutes with many children ignorant of their status and just over half receiving antiretroviral treatment (ART).
When it rains, it pours in Nigeria.
About Nigeria, the report indicated that in 2020 one Nigerian child was infected with HIV every 30 minutes which translated to about 20,635 children becoming newly infected with HIV in 2020.
The report continued its frightening revelations:30 percent of AIDS-related deaths in 2020 occurred in children. Only about 3.5 per cent of the 1,629,427 Nigerians receiving antiretroviral treatment (ART) were children.
In all, the grim highlight reel of the report showed a grave risk of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
This simply cannot continue to happen.
What do children know?
How much should something they know nothing about be allowed to affect them?
In a country crippled by its own crumbling health care, do children have to add HIV and AIDS to their cabinet of killer diseases?
In 2020, Save the Children, an International NGO that protects children, with headquarters in London, United Kingdom, and offices around the world, directly reached nearly 45 million children in 122 countries. It responded to 136 humanitarian emergencies across 77 countries and contributed to 33 policy and legislation changes for children`s rights.
According to its Global Childhood Report 2021 containing the End of Childhood Index which compared the latest data for 186 countries – the highest number ever – assessing where the most and fewest children are missing out on childhood, Nigeria, the giant of Africa, with a score of 549 out of 1000 came in an embarrassing 180th position out of 186 countries, well behind otherwise backwater countries like Eswatini in 135th, Djibouti in 138th and Eritrea in 170th. Even war-torn Yemen and Syria performed better than Nigeria in 162nd and 165th places respectively.
If Nigerians were not sufficiently alarmed, they were soon to be by the fact that the country`s 180th position out of 186 countries in the 2021 Index was similar to what obtained in the 2020 Index where the country came in 174th place out of 180 though with a slightly poorer score of 546.
It is instructive to note that in the 2021 report, all ten countries occupying the last ten places are countries from Sub-Saharan Africa.
It begs the question of what we want for children in this part of the world.
Has Africa become a graveyard for children? Why are children especially caught in the cyclone of conflict and corruption rippling through the African continent with malevolent fury?
With Nigeria, the so-called giant of Africa, setting such a catastrophic example in how not to treat children, what can Africa do to safeguard its children and its future?
In Nigeria, can we sincerely hope for a future without needless deaths and avoidable diseases if we continue to needlessly hang our children out to dry?
Every country serious about its future makes painstaking efforts to protect children. There is no other way. It is staggering irresponsibility to expose children to the effects of conflicts and crises they should bear no responsibility for whatsoever.
If Nigeria is to get serious about its future, fashioning the strongest response possible to the HIV crises threatening children is a good starting point.
Few things can compete in evil with sentencing children to a lifetime of an incurable sickness.
To allow the bodies of innocent children be ravaged by a disease they know nothing about is not only gravely immoral.
It is the gravest injustice.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
