Leaders in Migori County lament that HIV/AIDS constitutes a larger percentage of the factors leading to children languishing in poverty in the County.
Speaking during the Migori County Development Champions Forum, the leaders said the children’s plight regarding Hiv/Aids was more serious than other reports made regularly about them by the media.
Migori County Development Champions Forum Chairman Roberts Mogesi Chacha noted that for a long time, the media has highlighted child labour, early marriages, Female Genital Mutilation, high rate of school dropout, prostitution and child battering as some of the factors driving children to lead miserable lives.
He emphasised that child destitution in Migori County is real and its magnitude is much greater than what people think.
“The high HIV/Aids prevalence rate within the county, especially along the Lake Victoria beaches, has left many children orphans and they lack basic needs such as food, medicine and education,” Chacha said.
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He has called upon the government, and other well-wishers to help the children and parents whose future seems bleak due to the disease.
Further, he has said that the regrettable children's poverty situation was not only unique within the lake beaches but was also manifesting highly in Migori and Isebania towns as well as other local urban setups and rural villages within the region.
“These urban areas and the beaches have more children headed households after their parents succumbed to the dread disease than any other areas within the County,” said Mr Chacha.
In attendance at the forum were leaders including chiefs, civil society members, religious leaders and the business community attributed the infection rate in urban areas to fast business growth which, they said, attracted people from as far as Kisumu, Mombasa and Mwanza in Tanzania.
They said the assessment so far made in the area has found so many child-headed families and numerous orphans under the care of poor relatives.
