Madonna's adoption defence: David was abandoned

And she insisted the baby's father had happily agreed to the adoption, despite conflicting reports of his views.

Choking with emotion, the star told millions of Americans how 13-month-old David had been fighting for his life against severe pneumonia when she first met him in an orphanage that could not afford to treat him.

He had survived malaria and tuberculosis, but could hardly breathe as the fluid from pneumonia filled his lungs.

  Madonna said: "I was in a state of panic. 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."

  Now David is recovering at their London home with the help of her other two children, Lourdes, 10, and Rocco, six, she said.

She added: "They are completely in love with their new baby brother. 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."

  With tears in her eyes the Material Girl told American TV chat show queen Oprah Winfrey how she first saw David in the orphanage, being held by an eight-year-old girl who had HIV.

She was 'transfixed' by him, she said - although, "I didn't yet know I was going to adopt him. I was just drawn to him." 

Speaking on a video link from London, Madonna said she and her husband British film director Guy Ritchie, had wanted to adopt a child for two years.

It was her charity work in Malawi that brought her to David.

  But, she said that she never expected the criticism that has surrounded his adoption.

  Madonna said: "It didn't really hit me until I got back to England. It's pretty shocking.

"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."

Speaking with what most Americans in the studio audience viewed as an English accent, Madonna said she and her husband have been granted an interim adoption by the Malawian government.

  This means David will live with them for 18 months, monitored by a social worker who will visit them periodically to ensure he is well cared for and not neglected.

After the 18 months, they will be allowed to legally adopt him.

  Madonna, who donated £1.7 million to the orphanage where David lived, hit back at critics in Britain and Malawi who have charged she used her celebrity and money to short-cut the adoption process.

  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.

"I was warned by my social worker that because of that they were more or less going to have to make them up as we went along.

"She said to me, 'Pick Ethiopia. Go to Kenya. Don't go to Malawi because you're just going to get a hard time.'"

  But Madonna said she wanted a child from Malawi because her charity work had opened her eyes to the problems orphans there face.

David had arrived at the orphanage when he was two weeks old and had spent all his life there since then with 500 other children.

  She was told his mother and her three other children had died of HIV. His father's whereabouts were unknown, and he had never visited David in the orphanage.

  Madonna said: 'David was very ill with pneumonia when I first saw him. He still has it a little, but he is recovering. 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 his welfare.'

  Although the father, Mr Yohande Banda, had had nothing to do with his son, the Malawi Minister of Children and Mothers Welfare told her they would have to find him to get his consent for the adoption.

Once Mr Banda was located, he agreed to the adoption saying he always hoped that someone like Madonna would be able to give his son a better life.

Since then Mr Banda has flip-flopped in interviews, first supporting Madonna, then saying he did not understand what he was doing when he agreed to let her adopt his son.

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

She said she was not hurt by the media's treatment of the adoption, but was 'disappointed' because it might stop other people from following her example.

"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," she said.   "I beg all of those people to go to Africa," she said, "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 sewers everywhere. To see what I saw.

"It is a 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."

A coalition of human rights groups will ask a judge there to review the case, claiming that the country's laws prevent international adoption, even by celebrities.

Her interview won her support among American women in the studio audience.

One, mother-of-two Sue Waldman, said as she left: "Madonna is an intelligent woman. She made a lot of sense. I am not always the greatest fan of hers, but it was a good thing that she did."