One Million Orphans in Ghana

Accra, Dec 14 - According to the latest statistics released by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), one million of the 48.3 million orphans south of the Sahara desert, live in Ghana; one-quarter of whom have lost their parents to AIDS.

War, AIDS, malaria, cholera and famine have gradually turned Africa into a continent full of orphaned children and teenagers.

Between 1990 and 2000, the number of orphans in Africa rose from 30.9 million to 41.5 million, and those orphaned by AIDS increased from 330,000 to seven million.

Projections by the two U.N. agencies suggest that by 2010, there will be 53.1 million children under 18 bereft of their parents, 15.7 million of whom will have had parents who died of AIDS, caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

The spine-chilling statistics on African orphans estimate that there are 710,000 in Mali, 800,000 in Niger, 600,000 in Chad, 1.7 million in Sudan, 280,000 in Eritrea, 48,000 in Djibouti, 4.8 million in Ethiopia, 630,000 in Somalia, 560,000 in Senegal, 710,000 in Burkina Faso, 370,000 in Benin, 64,000 in The Gambia, 100,000 in Guinea-Bissau and 370,000 in Guinea.

Nigeria has 8.6 million orphans, Ivory Coast 1.4 million, Liberia 250,000, Sierra Leone 340,000, Ghana and Cameroon one million each, Equatorial Guinea 29,000, Gabon 65,000, the Republic of the Congo 270,000, the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) 4.2 million, Rwanda 820,000 and Burundi 600,000.

Uganda and Kenya are home to 2.3 million orphans each, Tanzania to 2.4 million, Angola and Zambia 1.2 million each, Malawi 950,000, Namibia 140,000, Botwsana 150,000, Zimbabwe 1.4 million, Mozambique 1.5 million and South Africa 2.5 million each.