One night in 2003, Agnes Dlamini woke to the sound of her infant grandson crying. His mother–Dlamini’s daughter-in-law–had died after a long illness. The baby was left on top of her emaciated body, sucking helplessly at his mother’s lifeless breast. That tragedy, Dlamini now knows, is the result of South Africa’s failure to address the spread of HIV.

The legacy of denial is 3.37 million South Africa children under the age of 17 without one or both parents.