Madonna has claimed that she had no idea adopting a baby from Malawi would cause so much controversy.

The star said she was shocked by the media interest in the processs - and said she was left disappointed by the reaction.

Why can't OUR family orphans come here too?

In a highly-anticipated interview with US chat show queen Oprah Winfrey, Madonna has spoken for the first time about adopting 13-month-old David Banda.

The interview is set to air in the US later today but a preview was posted on Winfrey's official website this morning.

In the hour-long chat, Madonna blasts the press for what she claims is "negative" publicity surrounding the controversial move.

She insists that claims by David's father that he did not know he was giving up his son for good are false and defends her decision.

She says that the child, now living with the star and husband Guy Ritchie in London, is well-loved by her two children.

And she revealed that David was desperately ill when she met him - and is still being treated for pneumonia.

She said: "I didn't realise that the adoption was causing any controversy until I came back.

"There were a million film crews in the airport and press camped outside my door.

"I don't read newspapers or watch television, but all of my friends have let me know what everybody's talking about and what's going on in the news.

"So it didn't really hit me until I got back to England. It's pretty shocking.

"I wouldn't say I'm hurt by it, but I would say I'm disappointed.

"I understand that gossip and telling negative stories sells newspapers. But I think for me, I'm disappointed because it discourages other people from doing the same thing - for anybody who had the idea that they, too, would like to open their home and give a life to a child living in an orphanage who might possibly not live past the age of five.

"Anybody who had that idea would be discouraged from doing it. For me, that's what disappoints me the most.

"I feel like the media is doing a great disservice to all the orphans of Africa, period, not just Malawi, by turning it into such a negative thing.

"I beg all of those people to go to Africa and see what I saw and walk through those villages - to see eight-year-olds in charge of households.

"To see mothers dying, with Kaposi sarcoma lesions all over their bodies. To see open sewages everywhere. To see what I saw. It is a state of emergency. As far as I'm concerned, the adoption laws have to be changed to suit that state of emergency.

"I think if everybody went there, they'd want to bring one of those children home with them and give them a better life."

And she told how the tot was close to death when she met him - and still has pneumonia.

She added: "When I met him, he was extremely ill.

"He had severe pneumonia, and he could hardly breathe. I was in a state of panic, because I didn't want to leave him in the orphanage because I knew they didn't have medication to take care of him. We got permission to take him to a clinic to have a bronchial dilator put on him.

"He had pneumonia and was given an injection of antibiotics. He's still a little bit ill, not completely free of his pneumonia, but he's much better than he was when we found him."

She said David is settling in with his new siblings, Madonna's two children Lourdes, ten, and Rocco, six.

She told Oprah: "They just embraced him, and that's the amazing thing about children.

"They don't ask questions. They've never once said, 'What is he doing here', or mentioned the difference in his skin colour, or questioned his presence in our life.

"That is an amazing lesson that children do teach us."

She blasted critics who said she fast-tracked the adoption process because of her celebrity status.

She said: "I assure you it doesn't matter who you are or how much money you have, nothing goes fast in Africa.

"There are no adoption laws in Malawi. And I was warned by my social worker that because there were no known laws in Malawi, they were more or less going to have to make them up as we went along. And she did say to me, 'Pick Ethiopia. Go to Kenya. Don't go to Malawi because you're just going to get a hard time.'"

Madonna, 48, and husband Guy Ritchie, 38, have been granted an "interim adoption" by the Malawian government.

David will live in their care for an initial 18 months while a London-based social worker will visit them periodically to ensure David is being cared for and not neglected. After the 18 months is up, Madonna and Guy may then legally adopt David.

Madonna says that she and Guy had planned on adopting a child two years ago.

But she said it was her ongoing charity work in Malawi that persuaded them to adopt in Africa.

She said: "I'm financing a documentary about orphans in Malawi, so I was allowed to view footage and photographs of a lot of the children.

"An eight-year-old girl who is living with HIV was holding this child.

"I became transfixed by him.

"But I didn't yet know I was going to adopt him. I was just drawn to him."

Madonna said the child has spent most of his life in an orphanage with 500 other orphans. She later learned that David tested negative for tuberculosis, malaria, HIV and other common illnesses striking African orphans.

And she insisted that claims by David's father, Yohane Banda, that he did not know he was giving up his child for good are totally false.

She added: "Here's what I knew. David had been living in this orphanage since he was two weeks old.

"He had survived malaria and tuberculosis, and no one from his extended family had visited him since the time he arrived. So from my perspective, there was no one looking after David's welfare.

"I do not believe that is true. I sat in that room, I looked into that man's eyes.

"I believe that the press is manipulating this information out of him.

"I believe at this point in time, he's been terrorised by the media.

"They have asked him things, repeatedly, and they have put words in his mouth.

"They have spun a story that is completely false."

thisislondon.co.uk

I agree with her totally and see no reason why the media should be able to do what they are doing which is more disturbing in my opinion.