–The future is grey–. Elderly people in the HIVAIDS crisis: victims and part of the solution

Oct 23, 2007 | Bern

The forum is jointly organized by aidsfocus.ch and Kwa Wazee in the context of the exhibition "Africa’s Grandmothers fighting against HIV/AIDS". It raises a number of issues on the impact of the HIV crisis on old people and opens the discussion on various approaches and strategies for the support of elderly people.

"In Africa, the grandmothers are the unsung heroes of the continent: they are poor, they live with the inconsolable grief to have buried their own adult children, they are tired, they are hungry. At the same time they are extraordi-nary, resilient, courageous women, who become parents again in their sixties and seventies and eighties." (Stephen Lewis, former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa)

Grey, unknown, hidden and forgotten – old or elderly people in developing countries rarely make the news: they have the reputation of being passive and non productive, they are not talked about, they are most often not even mentioned in aid-programmes targeting the most vulnerable populations.

Only in the last couple of years it became obvious that old people are among those most severely hit by the consequences of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. They are faced with the sickness and the death of their children and by this with the loss of an important part of their social security. And they are driven into new responsibilities: In Africa south of the Sahara, up to 30% of all households are headed by elderly people and up to 50% of all the orphans are cared for by their grandmothers. Consequently, old people have become key players in the alleviation of the consequences of HIV and AIDS.

Invited to the forum are collaborators and decision makers of aid and development agencies dealing with issues of HIV and AIDS and poverty alleviation as well as other interested people.

Language: German (with English translation)