SIXTY-ONE children living with HIV/AIDS are to benefit from the proceeds of a five-kilometre charity health walk that will take place on May 27.

The inaugural health walk, which is expected to raise at least $250,000, is being staged jointly by the Pharmaceutical Society of Jamaica (PSJ) and Cari-Med and will begin at the Emancipation Park in Kingston.

“The idea for this walk arose out of our concern for the plight of children living with or affected by HIV/AIDS,” Vevinne Walker, pharmacist and customer service manager of Cari-Med, said during the launch of the event at the Cari-Med offices in Kingston yesterday.

“The effects of HIV and AIDS on children who are orphaned, or in families where parents are living with the virus, not only include these calculable losses (social and economic circumstances that contribute to vulnerability), but also the immeasurable effects of altered roles and relationships within families,” she said. “Clearly HIV infection has its greatest impact on the young.”

The children who will benefit from the proceeds of the health walk are all from the Mustard Seed Communities Dare to Care hospice for children. They are between the ages of four and 16 and are orphans or have been abandoned by their parents.

Data from the Ministry of Health has shown an increase in the number of AIDS cases among children. According to the ministry, 34 new AIDS cases were reported in children under 10 years old between January and June last year compared to 24 new cases between the same period in 2005.

Meanwhile, statistics from the United Nations Development Programme indicate that 10 per cent of new HIV infections occur among children under age 15. Since the virus was first identified in 1981, more than three million children have been born HIV positive and the mothers of over eight million children have died from AIDS.

However, Norman Dunn, the president of the PSJ, pointed out that children living with HIV/AIDs can live long, healthy lives and should not be discriminated against.

“They have a right to education. They do not pose a health risk to others,” he said. “Students infected should not be excluded from institutions of learning…They have a right just like any other child.”

Debbie Carrington, coordinator of treatment, care and support of the ministry-run programme for persons Living with HIV/AIDS, said the ministry is working assiduously to reduce the transmission of HIV from mother to child through prevention of infection to women of child-bearing age, prevention of infection during pregnancy, prevention of transmission from an HIV-infected pregnant woman to her unborn child and prevention of infection in breast feeding mothers.

“The prevention of the mother to child transmission programme has been one of the most successful programmes in the national HIV/AIDS response,” she said, adding that the programme aims to reduce the rate of transmission from mother to child to less than five per cent.

Apart from raising funds for children, Cari-Med will also seek to elevate the tolerance levels among schoolchildren as it relates to their peers living with HIV/AIDS and elevate the consciousness of the risks associated with irresponsible sexual behaviour.