MAPUTO, June 5 (AFP) - More than a million children will be orphaned by AIDS in Mozambique in the next five years, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned Monday.

"The whole of Mozambique has been drastically affected by HIV/AIDS with the central provinces being the worst affected," UNICEF spokesman Ian Macleod told AFP.

Despite the figures released Monday, Mozambique is regarded as the least HIV/AIDS-affected country in the southern African region.

The government has admitted the dramatic prevalence of the epidemic in central and northern provinces of Manica, Sofala, Tete and Zambezia and blamed it on their proximity to the region's most infected nations such as Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

One in four adults in the four provinces are HIV-positive, Macleod said.

He said that an estimated 350,000 Mozambican children have already been orphaned by AIDS.

Last year's government statistics indicated that about 15 percent of the Mozambican population of 17 million people were HIV positive with an average of 700 people being infected every day.

The UNICEF official said it was impossible to build orphanages for 350,000 children and urged the Mozambican communities to foster the orphans.

"Communities should not abandon these kids, they must integrate them, making sure they live a normal life," MacLeod said.

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