Through the work of two remarkable Thai doctors, a visionary local paediatrician Professor Vicharn Vithayasai and his wife and immunologist Dr Prakong Vithayasai, the charity has helped to prevent over 500 children being abandoned in orphanages. The long term goal is to enable these young people to become independent and productive adults.

Away from the Thai capital of Bangkok and the beach resorts in the south, 80% of the Thai population works in agriculture. Few visitors to Thailand get to see the rural areas where the daily struggle with poverty and deprivation may be an inescapable fact of life for many families. When AIDS destroys families, children are in an extremely vulnerable position. The local communities may even, through lack of information about this disease, initially stigmatize these children and some have been refused entry into local schools.

UKTCF recognises how important it is for these children to try and have as normal an upbringing and education as possible, to give them sufficient skills to be self-supporting. One of the greatest tragedies of the world wide AIDS epidemic is that children who have been uninfected but disadvantaged through parental loss end up without education and are extremely vulnerable to exploitation. Often they in turn end up in the commercial sex industry through which they may themselves acquire HIV. It is in breaking this appalling cycle that our charity strives to make the biggest difference.

UKTCF currently supports around 500 such children, in the most practical ways it can. For extended families to take these children in, they need information about the disease, education about living with HIV and, most importantly, some material support to allow them to keep the children in their home and attending school.  NOTE: The number of children we currently support has decreased from 500 in 2005, to around 350 today.  This is due to children graduating from high school, technical college, university or moving away from the Chiang Mai area.  We are only taking on new children now, who are infected by HIV. PJ Morgan 1st Aug 2010.