Malawi boy faces being sent home to see his parents slowly die of Aids

For a child who has endured more adversity in his seven years than most face in a lifetime, Dumisani Lungu's approach to immigrant life in Britain has been an extraordinary one.

The boy's mother and father were diagnosed as HIV-positive soon after arriving here from Malawi two years ago - prompting HIV tests on Dumisani which, as yet, have proved inconclusive. Yet he has quickly settled into life at a primary school in Stockport, Greater Manchester, overcoming fears about the reception he might receive to develop a passion for football, music and dance.

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But what sense of optimism Dumisani might have developed was in tatters as he and his parents were told by the Home Office that they were to be deported.

Dumisani is among the first of about 20 children due to be deported despite having, or being suspected of having, the HIV virus. Only the failure by the Home Office to find an appropriate escort saved the family's deportation yesterday.

Their threatened removal prompted Martin Narey, Barnardo's chief executive, to question the Government's "moral compass".

He said: "If these were white European children, they would not be going back. But because they are African, we seem to be turning our faces away.

"You have the nonsense of Madonna going to Malawi to bring a child to Britain and yet here is Britain, the fourth richest nation on earth, sending a seven-year-old to face an unthinkable future of seeing his mother and father die - and then dying alone."

Dumisani's threatened removal from Stockport, where he attends Broadstone primary, comes as doctors continue tests on him to determine if he is HIV-positive. If he is - there is a 30-40 per cent chance - he will be deported to certain premature death.

He will quickly be orphaned, too. His mother, Caroline Manchinjili, 36, has grand mal epilepsy, a condition which causes frequent seizures and which, without the treatment available here, will kill her within months, according to doctors who have also been treating her for tuberculosis.

Speaking to the BBC by phone last night from the Yarl's Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire, Mrs Manchinjili, said: "What will happen if we do go there [Malawi] ... there is nothing for me and my son will be an orphan for sure."

Antiretroviral treatment on his father, Brian, was to have started in Manchester last Friday - hours after immigration officers raided the family's flat and removed them, in their pyjamas, to Yarl's Wood.

Dumisani will be alone when his father dies as his last surviving relative, his grandmother, died of Aids last year.

Mr Narey, a former director-general of the Prison Service and a permanent secretary at the Home Office, tackled Tony Blair about the 20 HIV children during a meeting at Downing Street on 20 January, and says the Prime Minister seemed to be "genuinely sympathetic" after being shown the smiling photograph of a 15-year-old HIV-positive Malawian girl in British school uniform.

Mr Blair asked Mr Narey to discuss the issue with his No 10 advisers and the Home Office. "Despite the Prime Minister's words, I've heard nothing since from the Home Office," Mr Narey said.

Dumisani's parents fled Malawi in 2005 to escape alleged political persecution after an arson attack on their home which left mother and son with substantial burns. His mother is an IT specialist who repaired computers for a living, and his father a trader.

With them at Yarl's Wood yesterday were Michael, 13, and his mother, Joyce, 55 - both Malawian, HIV-positive and also awaiting deportation. Mr Narey, who has seen the medical evidence, expects both to die within three or four months of repatriation.

The decision to deport these individuals is based on a judgment by the House of Lords in the case of asylum-seeker "N". This decreed that no asylum-seeker could claim entitlement to stay on medical grounds, even if, in the absence of medical treatment, his or her life would be shortened. Only applicants who are dying can stay. Perversely, this means Michael can be deported, because the treatment improves his life expectancy.

Malawi: a country ravaged by Aids

The overcrowded and understaffed hospitals of Malawi are overwhelmed by an Aids epidemic, in which 14.2 per cent of the population - 1.8 million people - are HIV-positive.

A total of 90,000 deaths in 2003 were due to Aids and the disease has orphaned 700,000 children. Life expectancy is 36 years. There are multiple problems for the health service. There is a dire shortage of nurses - 2,200 for an ailing population of 12 million in a country where typhoid, hepatitis B, rabies, tuberculosis and cholera are also prevalent.

There is also a shortage of anti-retroviral drugs for treating Aids. HIV is a more complicated virus to treat in children, which helps explain Malawi's mortality rate of 103 in every 1,000 children.

Lynda Shentall, an Aids treatment expert with the George House Trust, told a tribunal considering the case of a Malawian boy of 13: "If he were to be returned to Malawi, he would quickly fall ill and probably quickly die. By quickly, I mean within a couple of months."