Main article: 2005 Malawi food crisis
Life expectancy in Malawi is now as low as 36.5 years; five years lower than it was 50 years ago. This drop is due to the population's impoverishment, which is constituted by many factors, including:
Child mortality is 103/1,000. There are more than a million orphans, 700,000 of whom became orphans when their parents died of AIDS.
According to Malawi government estimates, 14.2% of the population are HIV-positive, and 90,000 deaths in 2003 were due to AIDS. Unofficial estimates based on private hospital entries give a HIV infection percentage of 30%.
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Malawi's staple food is maize but like other countries in Southern Africa, Malawi has repeatedly been affected by famines since 2002, when food was scarce for almost one third of the population. In 2003, 30 percent of the population were affected.
According to a FAO report from June 2005, 4.22 million inhabitants of Malawi, ¼ of the population, would not have enough food in 2005 to survive. In the south of the country, the rate of the population affected will be between 55 and 76 per cent. In the end of November 2005, the first famine deaths were recorded.
These repeated famines are caused by different factors including:
Some relief organisations, such as the Community of Sant'Egidio, Catholic Relief Services and other local and international organisations try to respond to the famine by distributing food parcels. The government also had a starter pack farm input programme for maize seed and fertilizer. The scheme was however subject to gross abuses and sometimes the poorest people did not receive any of the items that were purportedly earmarked for them. This programme was discontinued by the Bingu Wa Muntharika administration, which instead subsidised fertilizer for the local subsistence farmers.