| Malawi Facts Orphans Estimates for the numbers of orphans in Malawi vary, but it is generally agreed they number at least half a million. Some are cared for by a remaining parent who is often HIV positive, some by grandparents who, if they have inherited two or three families, simply cannot cope. A growing number are in orphan-headed households where a young teenager has left school to work for her siblings. The provision of orphanages is an unrealistic answer to such a massive problem. They are expensive and remove children from their own environment, institutionalising them. It for this reason that MACS supports community-based orphan care programmes taking place in the country.
MACS in action on orphans
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Orphans in Malawi: the facts - Before AIDS 2% of all children in developing countries were orphans. In sub-Saharan Africa 7-11% of all children are now orphans
- Due to AIDS the number of orphans is growing dramatically at a time when the number of care-givers is in sharp decline
- Some children have been orphaned more than once as carers who took the place of parents also succumb to AIDS and related illnesses
- 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
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