Margaret Fleming is a 73-year-old single mother of 12 children and a passionate adoption advocate. She is also the driving force behind an effort to ensure that HIV-positive children find loving homes.

A Jan. 6 Chicago Tribune article by Jennifer Grant provided the following insights into Fleming's work on behalf of HIV-positive children throughout the world:

Fleming is the founder of Adoption-Link Inc., an agency in Oak Park [Illinois] through which she has placed hundreds of children since 1992. During a 2002 visit to Vietnam to meet her now-9-year-old daughter, her eyes were opened to the crisis of children and HIV.

She returned to the U.S. and established Chances by Choice, a program that helps place children born with HIV.

To date, close to 60 such children have found adoptive families.

According to a UNICEF report, about 370,000 children younger than 15 around the world became infected with HIV in 2007. Most infections occur during birth or through breast-feeding. Many of these children are orphaned when their parents die of AIDS.

Labels: international, adoption_agencies, HIV

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By all accounts, Terri Smith and Brad Roback's Chicago-area home looks normal enough; a barking dog, an 18-month-old toddler (named Sachi), family portraits and organized chaos. But closer inspection reveals a key difference between this and many other households  a cluster of syringes and bottles on the kitchen counter.

Sachi, who is just under two years old, is HIV positive. She contracted the virus from her birth mother, a sex worker in India.

Writer Leslie Goldman wrote about Sachi's adoptive family -- and the plight of the many other HIV+ children who are still waiting for families of their own -- in a Dec. 1 Huffington Post article:

Families like Brad, Terri, and Sachi are helping to bring about that much-needed transformation. They're part of a small but growing group of would-be parents looking to bring a child into their homes and lives. Coupled with the increasing manageability of HIV in areas with access to medical care, children like Sachi are finding homes ... and thriving.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing them for a story in Parenting magazine, "An HIV Adoption Story" (December 2009 issue.) While no hard numbers exist for HIV adoption, the field is growing by "leaps and bounds," Erin Henderson, the coordinator for HIV-positive kids at Adoption Advocates International in Port Angeles, WA, told me.

In 2005, AAI helped two HIV-positive Ethiopian children come to the U.S.; in October 2009, the agency had 45 such adoptions in process or completed.

Labels: international, HIV

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Margaret Fleming adopted her first HIV+ child in 1997. After visiting an AIDS orphanage in 2002, she was inspired to found Chances by Choice, the nation's only nonprofit foundation exclusively devoted to placing HIV+ children with adoptive families.

"The organization acts as liaison between source agencies that identify children with HIV abroad and families in the United States looking to adopt. So far, 27 kids in Asia, Africa and Central America have received approval from their governments to be adopted..."

A positive HIV test at birth isn't necessarily a death sentence. There is a chance that the HIV antibodies will dissipate; something many potential adoptive parents don't know. Read more at MSNBC.com.

Labels: HIV, health, AIDS

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