By Emmanuel T. Erediano
Variety News Staff

SAIPAN Mayor Juan B. Tudela, together with the Department of Public Health and the Napu Foundation yesterday declared May 10 as World Aids Orphan Day.
Public Health Deputy Secretary Lyn Tenorio and Napu president Jack Sablan joined Tudela in reading the proclamation
Among the 15.2 million AIDS orphans in the world as of 2005, are two children in the CNMI who lost parents to AIDS.
They were the children of two mothers who died of AIDS last year, according to John Dax Moreno, Public Health’s AIDS/HIV and STD prevention program coordinator.
He said the families of the two mothers are now taking care of the children.
There are no new cases of HIV infection reported this year, Moreno said, as the Public Health program continues to implement community and educational programs on HIV-AIDS awareness and prevention.
As Tudela signed the proclamation, he asked the community to “pray that the numbers will not continue to rise.”
There are some 2.3 million children under 15 years old living with HIV/AIDS throughout the world, and 780,000 of them are in need of anti-retroviral treatment which only 10 percent of them have received so far, the proclamation stated.