Health Care for 500 HIV+ Children in Zambia

The following is an e-postcard from Kai Iizuka, a GlobalGiving Representative in Zambia.

Rebecca aged six is a double orphan living with her grandmother, Mary. The grandmother explained how she is the only one in the family earning income, and supports five to six members of the family by selling small packets of cobra wax colouring for five Ngwee each (about five cents). Having heard about the project after visiting the center, she put up Rebecca as a potential candidate as a beneficiary and was very relieved when she was chosen. The Matero Care Centre helps the family by paying for Rebecca’s medicine as well as occasionally providing a bag of mealie meal and even helping transport her to the hospital during emergencies. Other than that, they also helped supply Mary with fabrics to create table cloths to sell as she explained that she was now suffering from breathing problems, and selling the packs of cobra colouring was becoming harder and harder.

During the checkup, which is done on a regular basis ranging from once a month to twice a week depending on the severity of the child’s condition, Ms. Kanyanta Mirriam, who had kindly let me tag along to see how the organization went about checkups, started off by asking the family if there were any problems that may have cropped up since the last visit. From there she moved on to check the child for rashes that could indicate complications with HIV. After finding nothing, she pulled out a thermometer and a weighing scale from her handbag to check on the child’s overall fitness. Finally after the checkup she reviewed hygiene guidelines with the family and reminded them why it was important to keep a clean home as well as making sure to wash your hands and brush your teeth. It was all very comprehensive for a short visit, and Mirriam explained that she visited about three to four families every day to ensure that things were going fine.

On Saturday, I was invited to attend the SafePark activities that are hosted by the Matero Care Center every week from 9:00 till 11:00. This is where the children from nearby compounds are able to gather and take part in many fun but informative activities, and talk about their problems in a safe environment. There were about ninety children when I visited, ages ranging from four till about fourteen. For the first hour and a half, there were numerous physical activities such as dances, many Simon says-like games, and a form of duck-duck-goose. After this the children were split by age groups and discussed problems they were facing at home, or brushing up on what they should be doing for their day-to-day hygiene, and even how to know when they were being abused. One of the activities that stood out for me was the one where children were allowed to play with building blocks, and a lot of the times, this helped express problems that they were having at home. I was told that other days they also allow children to just draw or colour and that too helps with them expressing their personal feelings.

Power of Love's pediatric HIV/AIDS care program continues to improve the lives of several hundred children and families impacted by HIV/AIDS and malaria in Zambia. The vision for this program is to strengthen women and grandmothers, so that they can take care of their own children and sick family members at home. We do this by providing food, medicines and a package of life saving health care services to HIV positive children in Zambia.

The goal of this program is to keep children healthy so that they can attend school. At this time we have 200 HIV positive children in our program and 167 are of school going age. Out of these 167 children, 129 are in elementary school, 29 in middle school, and 9 in high school. We are proud that these children are able to attend school as out of the 200 children only 26% are being cared for by both parents, 84%  being cared for by a single parent,  grandparents or other relatives. We strive constantly to ensure that all children eligible for school are in school.

In addition to food and medicines, our program provides weekly health checkups, psychosocial counseling, education in prevention of HIV, adherence monitoring, and malaria bed nets to the children. As a result of this high quality care provided, most children are stable in health and able to live close to normal lives. In fact, most children showed positive signs of improvement in their health as measured by their weight and CD4 counts. All children (except two) gained weight/stayed same in weight; and all children (except 1) had stable or higher CD4 counts since January 2013. In addition, out of the 128 children on anti-retroviral medication, more than half are aware of their HIV positive status. Children who are aware of their status undergo adherence training that teaches them the importance of taking their medicines on time and provides them with simple tools so that they can adhere to their medication regimen. In addition, our Nurse and health workers monitor their adherence to the medication regimen and so far all children are adhering well to their medications.

Our program impacts 200 children and their families directly and an additional 1200 children indirectly as the family members share their knowledge of caring for an HIV positive child with others in the community. Your generous donation will provide much needed food, medicines, and health care services to several hundred children in the community of Matero in Lusaka, Zambia, and help them stay healthy and in school.

Thanks for your continued support.  

Links:

• Stories of children
• What makes our program unique?
• Achievements of our program