SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA   With diseases such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis continuing to claim the lives of millions of Africa's poorest adults, millions more children are being left homeless and orphaned. "Africa needs more than one billion dollars each year to care for the millions of orphans on the continent," an official spokesman for the United Nations recently stated. "In less than five years," the official continued, "there will be more than 50 million orphans in just 16 of Africa's 53 countries." "Such a situation," an African Union spokesman explained, "will easily destabilize countries because these children are vulnerable and they can be exploited. Funds will be needed for education and healthcare, but we don't know at the moment where the money is coming from."
	As a result of the orphan crisis throughout much of the African continent, more than a billion dollars will be needed each year to care for the children.
"In the past, people used to care for the orphans and loved them," a woman whose husband recently died from disease explained. "But these days they are so many, and many people have died who could have assisted them, and therefore orphanhood is a common phenomenon, not strange. The few who are alive cannot support them." "The epidemic of diseases such as AIDS and malaria in sub- Saharan Africa has already orphaned a generation of children," explains Fr. John Lynch of the Missionaries of Africa. "Now it seems set to affect future generations." Official reports estimate that, at the moment, there are more than 34 million orphans in the region today and some 11 million of them have been orphaned by AIDS. Eight out of every 10 children in the world whose parents have died of AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa. During the last decade, the proportion of children who are orphaned as a result of AIDS.