World News

Compiled by Martin Flynn

Still from ‘I am because we are’.

Madonna launches Malawi AIDS film

Pop icon Madonna has launched a hard hitting documentary about the plight of Malawi’s estimated one million AIDS orphans at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The film, entitled ‘I am because we are’, tells the harrowing stories of children, many of whom born to mothers who have died and most of whom now lead desperate lives.
First time director Natham Rissman, once dubbed ‘Madonna’s gardener’ or ‘Madonna’s nanny’s husband’ said, “We decided, if we were going to wake people up, we were going to try to point them in the direction of how we can solve these problems.”

The film was launched as Madonna waiteds for her adoption of a young Malawian boy to be finalised.

Meanwhile, Malawi has had great successes by introducing free antiretroviral drugs in some regions which had helped cut the AIDS death toll by 10 per cent in just eight months.

Doctors from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Malawi’s Karonga study found death rates dropping rapidly after the introduction of free HIV drugs.

One in seven of Malawi’s 13 million population is HIV positive and 800,000 nationals die from AIDS related diseases
each year.

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