The result is that whole families are dragged too far below the poverty line to survive. Severe malnutrition, preventable diseases and infant mortality rates increase. School attendance rates plummet, and many are forced to migrate from their villages to become urban street children, creating a whole new raft of social problems.
The Mango Tree Orphan Support Programme believes this snowball effect to be one of Africa's most appalling problems, and has discovered what it thinks is an innovative, effective and very cost efficient way of tackling it at its roots.
I was raised in a poor and hopeless family. My mother was a widow. I missed meals, missed school fees and often walked without shoes. Life had no hope. After I completed my primary education I was selected to join secondary school and then life became much harder for me. Secondary school fees were unaffordable.