Dying Children with AIDS and Malaria: the impacts on older parents

This project is a comparative study of the impact of losing a child to AIDS and malaria among older people in Togo. Since AIDS is a stigmatized illness, we hypothesize that older people who lose a child to AIDS lack needed social support because they conceal the cause of death of their child to others. This may compound the pain and suffering that they experience. Also, their bereavement process may be more difficult compared to their counterparts who lose a child to malaria.