The New Times- - About 1,673 children in Huye District, Southern Province live with the HIV/Aids pandemic, a district official has said. Petronia Uwizeye, the director of health department at the district, told The New Times that majority the children acquired the virus during birth.

She said they were born in 1990's at the time when there was no Prevention of Mother to Child HIV Transmission (PMTCT) programme.

She said since the introduction of PMTCT, the rate of HIV transmission among children has significantly reduced.

"The infection rate among children has since reduced tremendously following the introduction of PMTCT. What we are now worried about more is the situation that puts children at high risk," she said

The district has a total of 701 orphans, most of whose parents perished in the 1994 Genocide which claimed an estimated one million people. Sixty per cent of these orphans live in six orphanages in the district.