Our Mission to Aids Victims by Joyce Meyer

Joyce: “One of the biggest problems facing our generation and the next is the aids virus. This disease is literally ravaging nations and creating hundreds of thousands of orphans in the process. However, through your support we’re able to provide help for many of those left alone with this terrible disease.”

These precious people have something in common — they’re all fighting for their lives, battling aids. And with this epidemic, everyone is fair game. The numbers are staggering, with more than 33 million people around the world living with hiv/aids, and 25 million deaths worldwide since the start of the epidemic. Nowhere has the aids virus taken a greater toll than sub-Saharan, Africa, with over 22 million people living with the disease, and 1.6 million deaths last year alone. The tiny country of Swaziland has been hardest hit, and its biggest victims are the innocent children who through no fault of their own are suffering and dying.

Dave Ohlerking: “We assume that about half of our children are hiv positive. I told one visitor: If you walk through this camp and killed every other child, your name would be aids.”

Ben Rodgers: “Swaziland has the highest hiv prevalence rate in the world — 42.6 percent of the people in Swaziland are hiv infected. There are anywhere from 80 – 120,000 orphans in this country alone. That 15 to 45 age group is going to be gone; they’ll disappear within the next five to ten years. There was an article in the paper the other day about by 2025, they won’t have enough men to govern this country any longer. They’re talking about 16 and 17-year-olds running schools and running governments because of that generation being lost.”

In the developing world, the main cause of aids is sexual activity with multiple heterosexual partners. Other causes include iv drug use and improperly performed medical procedures. Many children are already hiv positive, either passed on during childbirth or through their mother’s milk. But there’s an even more ominous reason for the growing epidemic among children: Many are forced into prostitution. Or even more horrific, some men believe in the superstition spread by witch doctors that they can cure themselves of aids by having sex with a young virgin. As a result, very young children fall victim to rape, and the epidemic grows.