Seth Barnes Dec 6, 2008 7:00 PM

7 years old and HIV positive

What some of these orphans go thru just to survive will blow your mind.  For example, M------ is a seven year old boy that was born HIV positive. He ...

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What some of these orphans go thru just to survive will blow your mind.  For example, M------ is a seven year old boy that was born HIV positive. He is very small for his age; he looks like he's four, maybe five.

His mom was a teenager when she had him. His father was a Mozambican man who had come to Swaziland looking for work on the sugar cane farms because there was no work in Mozambique.

When he found out that she was pregnant with his child, he didn't care and left, never to come back.

Later it was confirmed that he had died of an AIDS related sickness. His mom died early in 2007 also of an AIDS related sickness and has left him orphaned. At the moment he is living with a family friend that cared enough and is taking care of him.

He does have distant relatives but they don't care what happens to him and do not want to take in a sick boy. Some others in the community pitch in financially to help send him to preschool, but they cannot always help and so sometimes he doesn't go to school. He is one of the children that we are hoping to adopt into the Children's Village.

There is a woman from the States who has expressed and interest in supporting him. He is in need of a good balanced diet because of the medication he is taking for HIV and for transportation to and from the hospital every month to get checked and receive his month's dose of anti-retrovirals. Also, because of his age, an adult needs to accompany him to the hospital and so the money for their transportation is also a need in his life.

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