High number of abandoned children attributed to AIDS

Burkina Faso's government has blamed the rising number of abandoned children in the country on HIV/AIDS, poverty and child trafficking. According to official statistics, orphans and abandoned children accounted for close to 18 percent of the country's 11.8 million population in 2003. The government said it had outlined a new strategy for working with NGOs and local communities to properly address the problem. "We already have people working towards these goals [of child protection], but they lack clear focus and sometimes don't know how to get the best results from their efforts," the director general of social welfare, Agnes Kabore, told the UN news service, PlusNews.