6-year-old Boy Lives Alone, China

Ah Long is a 6-year-old boy from China who has lost his parents to AIDS. He was born with HIV and even his 84-year-old grandmother doesn't want to live with him because she is afraid of getting sick. He lives in his parents’ shack in Guangxi Province, China, and receives monthly 70 yuan (about $10.50) from the government. Other villagers are also afraid of HIV and don't help the boy at all. His only friend is his dog.
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a lentivirus (a member of the retrovirus family) that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in humans in which the immune system begins to fail, leading to life-threatening opportunistic infections. Infection with HIV occurs by the transfer of blood, semen, vaginal fluid, pre-ejaculate, or breast milk. Within these bodily fluids, HIV is present as both free virus particles and virus within infected immune cells. The four major routes of transmission are unsafe sex, contaminated needles, breast milk, and transmission from an infected mother to her baby at birth (perinatal transmission). Screening of blood products for HIV has largely eliminated transmission through blood transfusions or infected blood products in the developed world.
HIV infection in humans is considered pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). Nevertheless, complacency about HIV may play a key role in HIV risk. From its discovery in 1981 to 2006, AIDS killed more than 25 million people. HIV infects about 0.6% of the world's population. In 2005, AIDS claimed an estimated 2.4–3.3 million lives, of which more than 570,000 were children. A third of these deaths occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa, retarding economic growth and increasing poverty. At that time, it was estimated that HIV would infect 90 million people in Africa, resulting in a minimum estimate of 18 million orphans. Antiretroviral treatment reduces both the mortality and the morbidity of HIV infection, but routine access to antiretroviral medication is not available in all countries.