Alicia Keys' charity gives medicine to HIV-AIDS orphans in Africa, as seen on NBC Nightly News

November 11, 5:12 PMCleveland Pop Culture ExaminerPaula Mooney

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(AP Photo/Eric Jamison)

Alicia Keys appeared in the below NBC Nightly News video talking about Keep a Child Alive, her charitable foundation that does an amazing job at providing hope and medicine to those afflicted with HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Whilst Americans with AIDS or HIV experience more readily available medicine to treat the disease, there's a "cruel disconnect" between AIDS in the US and in Africa, due to the lack of medicine on the continent, says Lester Holt and Keys below.

"Keep a child alive. One dollar a day. No one was doing it, or didn't know what to do," said Keys, whose website offers a plethora of ways to give or purchase items that benefit the charity.

"Because I grew up in New York and that's like thousands of miles away," Keys said she wondered if they knew her music, and they did all the way in Africa.

She spoke of orphans who lost their parents, "watched them pass away on the floor of their home and was left to take care of their brothers and sisters...with the whole world on their shoulders," she said.

"It just touched me so deeply," Alicia conintued. "Anything is cruel in the world where the medicine is available."

How to get people to care about those suffering and dying when they need not be?

"Imagine your mother, your daughter, your son, your best friend -- someone you love more than anything in the world -- standing before you and dying. Would you not help them?" Keys says she asks folks.

A group of women asked Keys: "Can you help us? We need the medicine," so directly.

"That was like, so direct. I stood there and looked at them, holding their children in their hands. That was very, very heavy for me," Keys said.

She had to do something to help. "And I had to. And I did."

Watch the video of Alicia Keys helping AIDS orphans and the HIV-positive in Africa:

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