ORPHANS IN MALAWI

Many orphans themselves were born HIV positive

Studies show that when both parents die the chances of children attending school are halved

As young adults, usually uneducated and, some of them, used to scratching a living from the streets, orphans become a security risk, threatening the fragile societies to which they belong

Orphans have little food, few clothes, no bedding and no soap...and as a whole, community care because of HIV/AIDS is overwhelmed and breaking down

Photo: © Julie Dennis Brothers

AIDS ORPHANS

Worldwide, it is estimated that more than 15 million children under 18 have been orphaned as a result of AIDS. More than 12 million of these children live in Sub-Saharan Africa, where it is currently estimated that 9% of all children have lost at least one parent to AIDS. As HIV infections become increasingly common among the adult population of the region, the brunt of HIV-associated mortality is expected to occur within this decade; as a result, millions of children will lose parents to AIDS. By 2010, it is predicted that there will be around 15.7 million AIDS orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The number of orphans in some Sub-Saharan African countries exceeds half a million, and, in some countries, children who have been orphaned by AIDS comprise half or more of all orphans nationally.

AIDS is responsible for leaving vast numbers of children across Africa without one or both parents. The first table above shows the countries with the largest numbers of AIDS orphans.

In some countries, a larger proportion of orphans have lost their parents to AIDS than to any other cause of death - meaning that, were it not for the AIDS epidemic, these children would not have been orphaned. The second table shows the countries in which the children who lost their parents to AIDS make up the highest proportion of the total national number of orphans.

Most of the AIDS orphans who live outside of Africa live in Asia, where the total number of orphans - orphaned for all reasons - exceeds 73 million. 5 There is, however, insufficient information available to provide figures for the number of AIDS orphans in individual Asian countries. The rest of this page concentrates on AIDS orphans in Africa, although the issues described here are present to some extent in many countries around the world.

Malawi responses to the AIDS orphan crisis

AIDS, extreme poverty and food shortages have all taken their toll on Malawi in recent years. By the end of 2005, it was estimated that Malawi had over half a million children orphaned by AIDS.

As early as 1991, the Government of Malawi established a National Orphan Care Task Force. The Task Force is made up of various representatives and organisations, which are responsible for planning, monitoring and revising all programmes on orphan care. One year later, in 1992, National Orphan Care Guidelines were established. The guidelines serve as a broad blueprint to encourage and co-ordinate regional and community efforts. The Task Force has also established a subcommittee that is reviewing existing laws and legal procedures to provide greater protection to vulnerable children.

An important aspect of the government's strategy has been to promote and support community based programmes. In both rural and urban areas across Malawi, communities are developing a variety of ways to cope with the growing crisis of AIDS orphans. In many villages orphan committees have been established to monitor the local situation and to take collective action to assist those in need.

The Government furthered its commitment to AIDS orphans in June 2005 when President Mutharika launched The National Plan of Action for Orphans and Vulnerable Children. This plan, which is due to run until 2009, aims to increase access to essential services - such as education, health, nutrition, water and sanitation - amongst AIDS orphans and other vulnerable children. It also aims to help families and communities provide support for such children.

The large number of children losing parents to AIDS in Malawi presents a daunting challenge to both the government and regional communities. A severe lack of human and financial resources continues to hold back Malawi’s fight against AIDS, including efforts to support AIDS orphans.

Source: AVERT - International AIDS charity

Hunger takes toll on orphans in Malawi - 15 November 2005

By Francis Musasa, Chimpholi, Malawi

On a hot summer’s day in the remote village of Chimpholi, in Kasungu district, 150km north-west of Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, more than 100 orphans aged two to 10 are gathered at a community-based childcare centre. They look as though they come from one big family. Their clothes are dirty, their small bodies frail. Instead of getting excited at the sight of visitors as usually happens in a normal group of children, they just stare blankly.

In spite of their weakness, they respond to their teacher’s instruction to sing a song "zikomo ambuye mwatizutsa" (thanking God for looking after them through the night). Later their teacher announces that their food is ready and that they should queue up for porridge. One by one they pick up a plate containing a handful of porridge. They sit outside under a tree to eat the porridge with their fingers.

Although it is his first meal of the day, Yohane Chabwera, six, is worried. “Sindinakhute,” he says, “I didn't have enough - am still hungry”.
Yohane had to share his meager porridge with seven other orphans. This is life for many children in Malawi following a drought that has left more a third of the population qualifying for food aid. Food aid seems to be the only hope for Yohane and many other children in Malawi.
A visit to Yohane's home bears testimony to the magnitude of the food crisis. Although his grandmother - his guardian since his parents died of AIDS-related illnesses two years ago – does her best, there is no food in the house.

“The only proper food today and for the rest of the day is the porridge we had at the childcare center,” says Yohane in a faint voice.
“Otherwise we rely on mangoes,” he explains, adding that, when the mangoes are green his grandmother would first cook them and later squeeze them to eat the juice as porridge. They never eat such food during good times.

“Sometimes it is very bitter and I just eat it because my grandmother tells me that if I don’t eat, I will die of hunger,” he adds.

Emmanuel Masongola, Malawi Red Cross project officer for Kasungu, says there are more than 300 orphans in this area alone whose plight has been made worse by the food shortage.

Wanting to help hungry children, most of whom are orphans, community leaders used to give them food at Chimpholi childcare centre, which is attached to a health post that was established by Malawi Red Cross, with support from the Netherlands Red Cross.

But due to the current food crisis, local leaders are now unable to donate food, as they can no longer afford to feed their own families.
John Zuze, a teacher at Chimpholi childcare centre, says the food insecurity is worsening.

“We can give the children less and less food now, and there is really nothing that we can do to change the situation.

“Our main concern is that these children may end up destitute and unable to attend school due to hunger. That will have a very long-term impact on the development of the country.”

The food shortages in Malawi are a result of the high cost of farm inputs and, above all, erratic rainfall during the last farming season. Soaring maize prices have put this staple out of reach of many people. The situation has been aggravated by long-term poverty and the impact of HIV and AIDS. As a result, many communities suffer from hunger.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, six million Malawians require urgent food aid. The government responded by establishing the Feed the Nation Fund and declaring a state of national disaster, in October, resulting in the United Nations, European Union, the United Kingdom and the World Bank pledging more than USD 100 million.

The problem has reached a critical point, with unconfirmed reports that more than 35 people have died of starvation.

Malawi is the first priority for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which, on October 18, launched an emergency appeal seeking CHF 39.4 million (USD 30 million) to assist 1.5 million people for nine months (until the next harvest). Besides Malawi, the other countries in the appeal are Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The World Food Programme estimates that 12 million people in these seven Southern African countries need food aid.

Along with providing food, the International Federation appeal will contribute to longer-term food security with water projects, and agricultural assistance such as starter kits with seeds and fertilizer.
In Malawi, the Malawi Red Cross has already started distributing food in six of the country’s 29 districts, with support from the government and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development. The Red Cross is targeting 61,096 households (about 336,000 people) in Karonga, Chitipa, Rumphi, Nkhotakota, Salima and Kasungu districts. As well as looking after families’ immediate needs, the programme is expected to increase food security in the future, because it also includes repairing irrigation systems.

Malawi battles AIDS orphan nightmare - October 2001 by Gumisai Mutue

In a rural district along the shores of Lake Malawi, Ms. Catherine Phiri leads thousands of volunteers in a desperate rearguard battle against HIV/AIDS: feeding orphans, providing homecare, counselling and encouraging people to get tested. For six years, they have worked without financing from outside the area, relying on contributions from fellow villagers in this poor part of the continent.

"We can only bring the kids together once a week for a meal," says Ms. Phiri, founder of the Salima AIDS Support Organization (SASO). "Apart from that, there is very little more we can do because we do not have the money. There is no funding at all for our orphan-care programme." Set up in 1994 in response to the rising number of HIV infections in Malawi, where an estimated one in seven adults lives with the virus, SASO reaches 58,000 households in Salima.

It was only last year that SASO, with its 2,650 volunteers, secured a grant of about $30,000 for its AIDS awareness programmes, but that runs out at the end of the year. "Government helps," Ms. Phiri told Africa Recovery. "But it does not have a dedicated fund for orphan care." After her husband died of an AIDS-related illness in 1990, she publicly declared her HIV-positive status and set up SASO.

There are hundreds of similar community organizations run by volunteers in Malawi, part of an extensive network coordinated through a national orphan-care task force established by the government in 1991. They have set up centres where children play, learn, are immunized and their health is monitored. Village committees assist children in desperate need, especially those looked after by elderly grandparents or parents who are very ill.

"The 'grandmother phenomenon' is the dominant orphan programme for the moment, I think, in much of east and southern Africa," says Mr. Stephen Lewis, UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. "It is a legitimate extended family arrangement and the kids by and large are related to one another and they are happy in that sense."

"Where they have turned it over to the broader community, rather than a grandmother or part of the extended family, the arrangements are often make-shift and ad-hoc and the kids are struggling," says Mr. Lewis. Of increasing concern to development planners is what happens when the grandparents die and, suddenly, child-headed households dominate.

No one knows exactly how many AIDS orphans there are in Malawi. Estimates put the total number of orphans at 850,000 to 1.2 million, rising to 2 million by the end of next year.

Resources are lacking to handle this growing orphan crisis. The government can only afford to allocate $250,000 for the gender ministry's social welfare department this year, notes Mr. Penston Kilembe, who is in charge of orphan care. "It's inadequate. We need much, much more money than that because we are talking about survival, growth and the development of these children." The government relies on the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) for 80 per cent of its child-care programme budget.

More than 365,000 Malawians have died of AIDS since 1985, when the virus was first diagnosed in this country of 10.6 million. Life expectancy has plunged from 52 years in 1990 to about 39 last year. The Joint UN Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) puts the adult infection rate in Malawi at 16 per cent.

The government acknowledges that its support "has been grossly inadequate and the condition of orphans is made worse by extreme poverty and the erosion of extended families." Malawi has, however, been praised for its humane and exemplary treatment of orphans despite the meagre resources.

UNICEF believes that political commitment is growing. President Bakili Muluzi is increasingly supportive of AIDS prevention and care programmes. In speeches, he frequently exhorts people to change their behaviour. He and his vice-president have both adopted AIDS orphans.
In 1992, Malawi became the first country in the region to develop guidelines for orphan care. These are being used as an example in neighbouring countries. They recommend that orphans be kept within their communities, and argue that government should be at the centre of national orphan-care activities.

But the government is losing many of its workers to AIDS. The health ministry estimates that by 2005 between 25 and 50 per cent of workers in urban areas will die of AIDS. While the rates of infection are higher in urban areas, the number of people infected is greater in the rural areas, where 85 per cent of the population lives. There, HIV/AIDS is presenting a daunting development challenge, diverting labour from farming into care provision, increasing food insecurity and threatening the survival of entire communities.

"Our biggest problem is poverty," says Mr. Kilembe. "At least 65 per cent of our people live below the poverty line. Many are unable to take on the responsibilities of extra children because they are already strained." Malawi's average annual per capita income is $200 -- less than half the $500 average for sub-Saharan Africa.

Many of Malawi's poor children are not in school because they cannot afford to go. In 1994 the government abolished tuition fees for primary education, leading to an increase in enrolment from 1.9 million to 3.2 million the following year. But for many, the road ends there. Only a fifth of primary school graduates make it into high school. The danger of a generation of uneducated adults is all too obvious to development planners.

Ms. Elizabeth Hughes, of UNICEF Malawi, says the main approach to orphan care should shift from vocational training to formal education. "When you go and speak to many of these children, they tell you what they really want is an opportunity to go to school," says Ms. Hughes. "We have to find a way of keeping them in school."

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Madonna’s involvement with Raising Malawi began indirectly through her series of children’s books. The impetus to write these books (such as The English Roses and Mr. Peabody’s Apples) came from her desire to communicate practical, spiritual wisdom in a way that would help kids make smarter choices in their lives.

This successful endeavor led her to join forces with an organization with the same goal of empowerment, called Spirituality for Kids (SFK). SFK is a unique educational program for children and families from at-risk communities that teaches them how to overcome the challenges of poverty, violence, drug abuse, and a host of other social ills.

Madonna has now worked with SFK for many years, promoting and supporting its programs to children and parents all around the globe. With Raising Malawi, she is taking it to the next level by bringing this life-saving wisdom to kids in areas of the world that would never find it on their own.

She is spearheading the construction of The Raising Malawi – Consol Homes Orphan Care Center, a place where children can come to eat, learn, read, and play in a safe, nurturing environment. This will also be where the children will be taught the principles of an SFK-based curriculum that is being co-created with local Malawian teachers to address the specific challenges in Africa.

Madonna’s universal appeal touches children of all backgrounds everywhere in the world. Raising Malawi is delighted and honored to have Madonna working on this vital and historic initiative.