By John Dalton | Arogya Agam's Founder
Refusal to take ART, the drugs that keep children with HIV alive and well, is more common in boys but not exclusively so. Aarthi, a 17 year old girl was born HIV positive and lives with her mother who is also HIV positive and taking regular treatment. She has not supported her daughter to take ART as she thinks that it causes unpleasant side effects. Our volunteers kept trying to contact Aarthi but her mother prevented it. When they did finally meet her, they managed to persuade Aarthi to restart treatment, but her mother would still not agree. A worried, Arthi phoned our volunteers who really showed their worth. They were able to introduce Aarthi and her mother to another family who had successfully dealt with a similar situation. They could give just the right kind of help and advice. This worked. After 4 months patient work by our volunteers, Aarthi has finally restarted ART and is determined to live a better life!
We work in a large rural area of South India and this is what we have been able to do thanks to your donations.
We hit our target of enrolling 940 children with HIV and we are still trying to trace 143 more children in need of help. We’ve found over 100 children not taking life-saving treatment, and persuaded 55 to take the correct medicines so far.
We know good communication between children and their guardians and honest discussion about HIV is vital. We’ve spoken to and counselled over 200 families and found that most guardians thought that their 10 to 13 year old wards didn’t know their HIV status but in fact over 80 percent do know they have HIV. Most guardians were afraid of how the children would react if they brought up the subject. Even in families where everyone has HIV, it is rarely discussed. So we are working with these families to give them the knowledge and confidence to discuss these difficult issues openly. We find that when they do this it is a great relief for all concerned.
We’ve studied and learned from 57 young women born HIV positive and who have recently married. We’ve created educational materials for HIV positive young women to help them handle the difficult subject of how to choose a partner, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of marriage to an HIV positive or negative man and the need for early disclosure.
In a new initiative we have counselled 600 HIV Positive unmarried young men about disclosure of their status to future marriage partners and how to practise safer sex. The men tend to say that they will only marry HIV Positive women, perhaps because they think this is the ‘right answer’. But with new drugs, this advice is out of date and we are educating them to make more appropriate choices.
We still face many challenges in helping children to take consistent and proper treatment: guardians need information and support especially when the children are ill as they often blame the drugs. Teenage boys in particular often drop out of treatment programmes which puts their lives in danger. We are doing our best to challenge the myths and misinformation about HIV that we encounter. There is still plenty of work for us to do!
Thanks for your support and interest
By John Dalton | Arogya Agam's Founder
By John Dalton | Arogya Agam's Founder
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
