Generation at risk

African churches respond to the AIDS pandemic

Half of all 15-year-olds in many African countries will not reach their 50th birthday. They will die of AIDS.

This stark observation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation illustrates the severity of the AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, a generation is at risk because of the AIDS pandemic sweeping the continent.

About 60 percent of the people in the world with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa, a region that contains only 10 percent of the world's population. More than 25 million people there are infected with the virus, and AIDS killed 2.3 million residents of sub-Saharan Africa in 2004.

Families are seeing their already fragile livelihoods shattered as AIDS claims the lives of income earners. Extended families and communities are struggling to care for orphans. Economies are threatened because so many people are dying in the prime of their working lives.

Average life expectancy in 11 African countries (age in years)