Statistiriffic!

Today I was working on compiling a list of statistics for a new adoption ministry at our church called Hands of Hope. As I was typing all the statistics I realized how hard it was to grasp such large numbers, each number representing an actual human being. Statistics can seem so impersonal and lofty, but yet represent something very real and personal. I wanted to list a few of the stats I found regarding orphans, and the AIDS pandemic.

• Every day 5,760 more children become orphans due to AIDS
• It is estimated there are between 143 million and 210 million orphans worldwide
• Every 15 seconds, another child in Africa becomes an AIDS orphan
• There are an estimated 14 million AIDS orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa (a number higher than the total of every under-eighteen year old in Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Ireland combined)
• 8 out of 10 children orphaned by AIDS lives in sub-saharan Africa
• Every 2.2 seconds another orphan ages out (is kicked out of orphanage) with no family to belong to and no place to call home. Studies have shown that 10% - 15% of these children commit sucide before they reach age eighteen and that 60% of the girls become prostitutes and 70% of the boys become hardened criminals
• In the known history of the world no disease has spread and reproduced in such a deadly way as HIV and AIDS. By the year 2010 the deaths from HIV will rival those of the bubonic plague, killing in excess of 93 million people (Global Heath Council, 2004
• Today in Zambia, 20 percent of all children are orphans, 57 percent of them due to AIDS. The burden of caring for 1.2 million orphans falls on the country’s 11 million people
• AIDS is the leading cause of death for adults ages 15-59 in Subsaharan Africa
• In 2001, just 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 70 percent of the orphans
• By 2010, the total number of orphans in Sub Saharan Africa will top 42 million. Twenty million of these children - or almost 6 percent of all children in Africa -will be orphaned due to AIDS
• The doctor to patient ratio in Ethiopia is 1:48,000 (in the US it is 1:142)
• In dollar amount, the United States is by far the largest giver of foreign aid, but by percentage of GNP we are not even near the top. The US giving % of GNP in 2005 was 0.15%
• By April of 2006, the US government had spent (according to congressional appropriations) $275 billion on the war in Iraq. According to the National Priorities Project, that amount could have completely funded worldwide AIDS programs for 27 years.
• We are the richest of the rich that have ever lived: Over 1 billion people—1 in 6 people around the world—live in extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1 a day
• Each year, more than 8 million people around the world die because they are too poor to stay alive. Many of these leave behind young children.

Can you even grasp the enormity of those issues? No one person is going to "fix" all these things, but no one person can afford not to try!