एड्स As the rooster crows

AIDs

As the rooster crows and the sun rises over the horizon, a mother in Africa knows it is time to wake up and start her day. She wakes up her children and lets them know the day has begun and it is time to start their chores. In America we learn that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but in Africa any meal the family can get is important. They begin their chores on an empty stomach, a common practice for this family of five since their father died last year from AIDS. The mother, earning less than a dollar a day, is barely able to feed her four children and she herself almost never has anything to eat (Hunter 28). Her children see her growing thinner and thinner as her health deteriorates at a rapid rate. She also is dying of AIDS and will most likely not live another six months. When she dies, her four children will be left alone to fend for themselves on the harsh and unforgiving streets of Africa. Most of them will die the same way their mother and father died if starvation and a host of many other diseases do not get to them first. This is the face of AIDS in Africa. These problems are all too common among households in Africa where the average life expectancy has dropped from sixty-five

If women, who act as mothers, aunts, grandmothers and caretakers for these children keep being the gender that is hit the hardest, there will be no one to guide the few remaining children who are healthy in the right direction. Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest population of people in poverty, two hundred twenty million people living without the resources needed to eat enough food in order to sustain a productive life (29). While gone, the men engage in acts of infidelity that their wives know nothing about. It is a disease that disables the immune system leaving the infected person open to catching any type disease. Some how, these women also need to be educated about AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The relationship between a man and a woman in a marriage, although baring some similarities, are still significantly different than what we are use to in America. With women dying off at such alarming rates, what happens to the children and the family structure in Africa and what factors are contributing to the rapid spread of AIDS among African women? AIDS is an acronym for autoimmune deficiency disease. Within the next two decades there will be an estimated forty million children orphaned by AIDS (4). It just seems that, for many different reasons, the women of sub-Saharan Africa are getting hit the hardest and the numbers do not seem to be letting up. The entire world is feeling the affects of AIDS, but no place has been hit harder than sub-Saharan Africa which now accounts for sixty-seven percent of the total number of infections worldwide (Hunt 354). Being uneducated is also putting their children"tms lives in danger. Women all over the world are at risk of this disease. With such a high number of them dying each year, there is no reason why they don not know how to protect themselves. In a country where many women believe they deserve a beating if dinner is not ready on time, one can only imagine how a husband would react if his wife asked him to wear a condom (41).