BLANTYRE, Oct 30 (AFP) - The United Nations (UN) on Saturday pledged 83 million dollars to support the growing number of orphans in Malawi, where HIV/AIDS has cut life expectancy to 36.
"Malawi will have one million orphans by the year 2010," Stephen Lewis, the UN's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, told reporters in the administrative capital Lilongwe at the end of a four-day visit to the southern African nation.
Lewis was in Malawi to assess the free antiretroviral programme in the country, which has been beset by lack of funding and slow receipt of drugs.
He said the country's strategic plan on orphans whose parents have died of AIDS was "quite impressive." Officially there are 700,000 orphans in the country, where 70,000 adults die of AIDS every year.
The UN will support the "continued flow of resources" in order to treat 80,000 people by the end of 2005, Lewis added.
He said 9,000 Malawians were currently on AIDS treatment, adding that the target was to get 40,000 on treatment by June and 80,000 by December next year.
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