Madonna Wants To Help More Than One Child In Malawi

Madonna's publicist has shot down published reports that her boss plans on adopting a young boy from the southeastern African country of Malawi.

The superstar singer is in the country this week to inspect the progress of a project that she's helped fund to support AIDS orphans in the country. Government officials, however, told reporters that she also planned to adopt a young boy from an orphanage in the capital city of Lilongwe during her visit. Reports of the impending adoption were carried by Reuters, Associated Press and other news outlets.

But Madonna's longtime spokesperson, Liz Rosenberg, told MTV News that the material mom has no plans to adopt a baby.

"There is no paperwork being finalized. She is visiting orphanages and totally involved in the building of a new orphanage and other initiatives to help the children of Malawi whose parents have died from the AIDS epidemic. So she is adopting an entire country of children."

Madonna told Time magazine in August that she was committing $3 million U.S. to an initiative called Raising Malawi to help orphans in the country of 13 million people, which has been plagued by malaria, drought and AIDS. It's estimated that there are at least one million orphans in Malawi, about 30 per cent of them diagnosed with AIDS.

The Raising Malawi centre in Mphandula will aim to feed and educate 1,000 children a day. There's also a push to improve the health, agriculture and economy in the area.

"Now that I have children and now that I have what I consider to be a better perspective on life, I have felt responsible for the children of the world," Madonna told Time. "I suppose I was looking for a big, big project I could sink my teeth into."

Madonna's new book, The English Roses: Too Good To Be True, will be published on Oct. 24. Proceeds from it will be donated to Raising Malawi. She also plans on making a documentary to raise awareness of the crisis facing the nation's children.