By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY

　　DURBAN, South Africa ?By 2010, the total orphan population in Africa, Asia and Latin America will reach 44 million, creating a child-care crisis never seen in a war, famine or tragedy of any kind, says a report out Thursday.
　　Two-thirds of those children (about 29 million) will have lost either one or both parents to AIDS, says the report, "Children on the Brink," sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
　　"Everybody is scared," says John Williamson, a co-author of the report. "We're moving into uncharted territory."
　　Williamson notes that 34 million people are infected with the AIDS virus, twice the number of people who have died from the disease. That means the orphan population will keep growing for 30 years.
　　He says many public health officials and welfare ministers in affected nations and aid organizations are spending much of their time at the 13th International Conference on AIDS here scrambling to find ways to cope with the crisis. To a person, he says, they're asking: "What can we do? What's the next step?"
　　Orphanages are not the answer, says Linda Sussman of USAID. Institutional care can cost $1,600 per child annually, compared with $4 per child for family-support programs. Zimbabwe would need to build an orphanage a day for 10 years to care for all the orphans left behind, she says.
　　Williamson, a technical adviser to USAID, says the only viable solution is to find ways to help extended families cope with the unprecedented burden. Because many of the families have lost their breadwinners, the solution should include setting up mini-loan programs and making it easier to grow vegetables so that wives and grandmothers can support households bursting with children.

(From USA TODAY)