Lethabo Foundation, South Africa

The Lethabo Foundation is run by a Dutch woman Judith Curre and a South African Michael Mampa, who focus on children in South Africa with AIDS. Their aim is to build a new orphanage that will provide 24-hour care for children infected with HIV/AIDS in Soshanguve, a township 40 km north of Pretoria, South Africa.

In South Africa there are 6 million people infected with the HIV virus, the virus that causes AIDS. Every week about 5,000 people die of AIDS and 12,000 people become infected, 1,400 of whom are babies. Over 800,000 children have lost both parents to AIDS, and this number is growing by the day. AIDS affects the weakest and poorest in the world, the women who are dependent on men and have neither the knowledge about AIDS nor the means to protect themselves against infection. AIDS has enormous social and economic consequences, because it mainly affects people in their productive years.

The new Lethabo Foundation orphanage will accommodate 60 children who are infected with AIDS and whose families are prevented by poverty or illness from caring for them properly themselves. Difrax is doing its bit for this good cause by providing financial support and by supplying Difrax baby products.