THE GLOBAL AIDS epidemic not only devastates individuals who become infected but also affects their families (United Nations Population Division 2003). Considerable attention has been focused on AIDS orphans (UNAIDS, UNICEF, and USAID 2002). However,elderly parents of grown children dying of AIDS may also suffer adverse consequences from the illness and death of adult offspring. Yet AIDS parents, as we call this group, receive little notice in the discourse about the epidemic other than in their role of fostering orphaned grandchildren and are rarely the subject of systematic research. The inattention to AIDS parents is not due to their small numbers. The large majority of adults who die of AIDS are survived by one or both parents (Knodel 2006). Thus worldwide, each year the number of older-age parents who lose a grown son or daughter to AIDS likely exceeds the total number of adults who die of the disease.
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