Health Care for 500 HIV+ Children in Zambia

The Power of Love team would like to thank its friends and donors who provide support to its pediatric HIV/AIDS care program in Zambia. With generous support from donors, we have been able continue to improve the lives of several hundred children and families impacted by HIV/AIDS and malaria in Zambia. To lern more click here.

Our Philosophy behind the pediatric HIV/AIDS care Program: We believe that the home environment is the best for a child's normal development and that with the right training "everyone can be a caregiver" for an HIV positive child. Many health care services needed by an HIV positive child can be provided at home by a trained family member supported by a trained health care assistant/ nurse at a much lower cost than in an institution. Accordingly, after enrolling an HIV positive child, we train family members in caring for him/her so that the child is under the care of a trained person 24/7. This leads to a better understanding and prevention of HIV/AIDS in the community. The ripple effect of this approach is huge and long lasting for the community.

In addition, we strongly believe that in a resource constrained environment, our services should be complementary and not competitive to those provided by the government clinics, with the common goal of improving the quality of life and health of children in the community. As a result, we work closely with the government clinics in Zambia to maximize the impact of each dollar of funds.

Our pediatric HIV/AIDS care program provides food, medicines, and a package of life saving health care services to 200 HIV positive children. The package of health care services includes weekly health check-ups from Community Health worker/Nurse, psychosocial counseling, adherence monitoring and training, and education in prevention of HIV for older children. In addition, we provide ongoing training to family members (most are grandmothers) in caring for an HIV positive child. This program benefits 200 children and their families directly and an additional 1100 children indirectly as family members trained in HIV/AIDS care become role models for others in the community. To date, over 450 women have been trained. Also, in the last seven years, we have had 323 children go through our pediatric HIV/AIDS care program but lost eleven children to AIDS. Statistically, we could have lost 50 children or more as life expectancy of an HIV positive child is just five years at birth. More importantly most of the children are back in school. To read more click here.

At present, out of the the 200 children,126 children are on ARV medication and our program provides them with much needed continuous care. As a result of this continuous quality care:

(i)  all children (except two), have either maintained or gained weight since January 2012. A stable or increased weight is an indication of stable health and is remarkable given the HIV positive status of the children and especially so since 63% are on ARV's.   

(ii) We provide adherence training and monitoring for older children who are aware of their status. At this time, all children who are aware of their status are adhering well to their ARV regimen.

(iii) As a result of better nutrition and health, all children eligible for school are in school and learning.

To sum: This program has increased survival rates, reduced malnutrition, and lowered the frequency of opportunistic infections, leading to systemic and long term improvement in health and attendance for the children.   

Cost of this program: It costs about 0.75 cents per day per child or about $55,000 per year to provide food, medicines and the package of life saving health care services to all 200 HIV positive children. We will be happy to provide an itemized break up of costs upon request.

Funding Requirements for 2012/2013

At this time, we are raising funds to continue to:

1. Provide food, medicines, and a package life-saving health care services to all 200 children in our program,

2. Train an additional 100 caregivers/grandmothers in caring for an HIV positive child.

3. Test caregivers of the children in our program for cervical cancer and breast cancer screening.

4. Continue the HIV “testing and prevention” program for caregivers so that our model continues to be comprehensive with elements of prevention, treatment, care for HIV.

5. Continue to provide school expenses for children whose parents need this support.

Please donate generously to this program so that all 200 children can continue to lead healthy and close to normal lives, and be back in school and learning.

Thanks.

Links:

• Summary of our program
• About Safe Parks
• How our program works