Abandoned and Dying Babies Symbolize South Africa’s AIDS Problem : Health: Of the more than 500,000 South Africans who carry the virus, about 15% are children. Cultural and religious customs hinder efforts to fight the disease.

Baby Gliss never had a chance--born infected with the AIDS virus, abandoned by his mother, now racked by disease that emaciates his face and makes him wheeze for breath.

He is one of the helpless, mostly forgotten victims of a growing AIDS problem in South Africa that may burden the first black-led government with spiraling health care costs as it tries to expand the economy.

Some 14,500 babies are like Gliss, born carrying the AIDS virus that leads to full-blown acquired immune deficiency syndrome and certain death. Each one represents the disease’s spread through families and communities.

“The numbers are increasing quite dramatically,” said Dr. John Burgess, who runs an AIDS clinic at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town. “When you diagnose a child, you are saying his mother’s got it, maybe the father, the siblings. You are diagnosing a community as well.”

Despite having the most advanced medical facilities in Africa, South Africa has not stemmed the spread of AIDS among its 40 million people. Under apartheid, the white government neglected medical care for blacks, who account for three-fourths of the population, and most AIDS victims are black.

Officials say more than 500,000 South Africans carry the AIDS virus and the number could double by the end of this year. About 15% are children and infants. Nearly 4,000 South Africans suffer from full-blown AIDS.

Africa’s worst AIDS nation is considered Uganda, where U.N. officials say about 44,000 of the country’s 17 million people have full-blown AIDS.

Unlike Western countries, where AIDS first infected homosexuals and intravenous drug users, the disease is spread mostly through heterosexual activity in Africa.

Cultural and religious customs have hindered efforts to fight it. Some black cultures permit multiple partners and promote large families, causing people to reject condoms.

Dr. Nkosazana Zuma, the health minister in President Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress-led government, plans to almost double the $6.2 million spent by the previous government to combat AIDS. Most of the money will go for education and prevention: training health care workers, developing awareness campaigns, buying condoms.

For infants like Gliss, whose surname cannot be disclosed under child-protection laws, the money will not matter.

Unlike adults and older children, babies infected with the AIDS virus die within two years, Burgess said.

Gliss’ mother abandoned him in a hospital when he was 2 months old and has seen him only once at his new home, a Roman Catholic shelter called Nazareth House.

“He’s been dying a few times,” said Sister Margaret, a British nun at the shelter. Now 11 months old, Gliss weighs 6 1/2 pounds, less than the average newborn, and doctors tell the nuns to expect him to die in his sleep.

Nazareth House, a 93-year-old stone building in the Cape Town area, and a Salvation Army center in the Soweto black township outside Johannesburg are the only two shelters for AIDS babies in South Africa, Sister Margaret said.

She oversees care for 23 babies--11 with AIDS, two with other terminal illnesses and 10 with Down’s syndrome, cerebral palsy or other debilitating conditions.

The government pays a subsidy for the care of each child that totals about $5,000 a month, which Sister Margaret uses to pay for food and supplies, three nurses, child-care workers and others. Occasional donations also come in.

“We are their family,” she said. “It is very hard for the staff because we get so attached to them.”

With the number of AIDS babies increasing, Sister Margaret wants to send the non-AIDS children to other shelters to make room.

“They are piling a lot of money into research and prevention, but the fact is we’ve got the problem now,” she said. “We will certainly be able to take more children if we get a better subsidy.”