Orphaned and in a children's hospital in Lisbon - Portugal, 6 year old Rita sketches out her dreams with coloured crayons, dreams of having a home. "I would like to have curtains and a lamp", she tells us emphatically. Her life with full-blown AIDS is a boring parade of examinations and medication. She hopes one day to find a place in a children's' home but her short life is already running out. The life expectancy for many AIDS children is just six years. In an adjacent bed, her 2-year-old friend Miguel throws himself against the bars of his cot. When his addict father died of AIDS-induced tuberculosis, his depressed mother left him neglected in his cot. "This is behaviour of an emotionally needy child", the hospital psychologist explains as Miguel goes on ceaselessly hammering at his bars. Few children will ever leave the children's wards. There are not many people prepared to care for sick kids who will so surely die.

Young mother Manuela is the embodiment of sin for the carers at Lisbon's AIDS hospital. "I was totally hooked on heroin when I got pregnant ... I had a feeling I was HIV." But the pregnancy went ahead and now she cares for Sara. "Up until two she had no problems but then the infections started to appear." Sara's two year older sister helps the ailing Manuela fix the family medication. On tiptoes at the counter she dishes out the drugs that keep at bay common diseases like thrush that caused Sara to lose her fingertips.

12 year old Cristina is relatively lucky. She didn't contract the HIV virus from her mother but each day she lives with the sadness of losing her only parent at such a young age. She's grown up quickly and remarkably after caring for her mother, Cristina now looks after her younger brother and sister at home. Her ambition is to be a nurse when she leaves school. For the three of them life is still uncertain. As minors they cannot continue to live without an adult and their fate resides with the courts.

The World Health Organisation estimate that globally at least 8 million children have been orphaned because of AIDS and annually half a million children are born with the HIV virus. This film sensitively and beautifully sees through the eyes of these children touched by the tragedy of AIDS.

Produced by SIC TV