When: April 2006

Where: Moatize, Mozambique

What: AIDS Orphans in Mozambique

When photographer Mickael Therer, on assignment with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF - Doctors Without Borders), dropped in for an unexpected visit, the orphans welcomed him with a song.

Therer explains that Laura Lichade, widely known as Dona Laura (seen behind the kids, smiling) is a local MSF staff member from Malawi. She was helped by MSF in 1988, enrolled in the AIDS program in Mozambique, and rapidly decided to take care of orphans, setting up the Dona Laura Orphanage for kids whose parents were victims of AIDS. “Since then she has been caring for more than 100 children with the help of the community and gifts from expats; she also created an association ‘to push the project beyond her life’. Her will is an extraordinary example for the whole community, without her these children would probably be abandoned.”

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According to government figures, 1.7 million of Mozambique's 17 million people are infected with HIV, and there are 470,000 children orphaned by AIDS in Mozambique alone. Mozambique also suffers co-epidemics of tuberculosis (TB) and malaria as well as seasonal cholera outbreaks, all of which exacerbate the impact of HIV/AIDS. Nine million children in Africa have lost a mother to AIDS, but the pain doesn’t end there. "We should remember that the process of losing parents to HIV/AIDS for the children often includes the pain and the shame of the stigma and the fear that the disease carries in most our societies,” says Bjorn Ljunqvist, UNICEF representative.

Some US $1 billion is needed annually to address the needs of AIDS orphans in Africa.

Dona Laura and her Orphans