Children are becoming orphans at a rate faster than orphans are being united with families. The rate at which children we becoming orphans exceeded two million. That’s a rate of a child becoming an orphan every 15 seconds. Contrast this with the United States leading in international adoptions with 12,7532. This is the orphan epidemic.
Looking closer into the root causes of how children are orphaned, extreme poverty and treatable diseases are at the core. Extreme poverty is a condition that plagues families in unimaginable ways. With over 1.4 billion people living on less that $1.25 per day, parents are faced with extreme conditions leaving children in dire circumstances. Parents simply do not have the means to care for themselves let alone care for their children. This economic condition often times leads parents to do unimaginable things like sell their children into prostitution and labor. Extreme poverty also leads into the other root cause of treatable diseases.
Diseases that lead in the mortality of adults namely tuberculosis, diarrheal diseases, and even HIV are treatable with drug regimens. Parents are not receiving the care needed to be healthy enough to care for their children. HIV drug treatments, for example, cost as little as $0.40 per day, but extreme poverty and the lack of outside support stands in the way.
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