SOME 5,000 Jamaican children have been orphaned as a result of HIV/AIDS, prompting Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller to call on infected adults to take greater care in ensuring they do not pass on the disease to their unborn children.

“I hope our men and women understand that when you get into relationships and you know you are infected you are not only infecting your partner but you are infecting a child that can come into this world,” the prime minister said Tuesday.

According to Simpson Miller, when mothers pass on the HIV/AIDS virus to their children it creates a greater burden, not only on families, but on the society.

“I am asking you to pay particular attention to this,” the prime minister said, adding that some 20,000 children are currently being affected by the disease.

“I am particularly concerned about reducing the incidence of HIV/AIDS among our children,” she said, as she pointed to a decline in AIDS cases over the last four years.

The decline, said the prime minister, was due in part to government’s deliberate strategy of increasing the prevention of mother to child transmission in public health institutions.

Simpson Miller was speaking at the official signing ceremony for the 2007-2011 Country Programme Action Plan between the Government of Jamaica and the United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) at Jamaica House in Kingston.

In the meantime, she said that she has had discussions with the justice minister, A J Nicholson, to look at legislation with heavy penalties for people who abuse children as well as those who know and support this abuse.

Bertrand Bainvel, representative of UNICEF, said the 2007-2011 Country Programme Action Plan is based on a consensus on the situation of Jamaican children and the urgency to tackle growing threats to childhood violence, HIV/AIDS and natural disasters.

“The results of the country programme action plan between the Government of Jamaica and UNICEF will be achieved and sustained only if we develop an environment supportive of children’s rights in Jamaica,” he said.

He urged the Government to build upon the decision to remove user’s fees in health service for children, by committing to additional financial resources towards a bold but achievable bi-partisan agenda where no child will be born with HIV by 2011.