A comprehensive, creative response Living with AIDS #191
SUE: Masoyi is a poor rural community of some 220 000 people where it’s estimated that 32 percent of the sexually active population are HIV positive. The average lifespan of people in the area is 33 years. The early deaths of adults not only weakens the social fabric of the community and reduces its earning power, it also results in an increasing number of children becoming orphans.
FLORENCE MBOKAZI: I’m Florence Mbokazi from Masoyi Home Based Care, now we are at Mtimba.
SUE: And I see we’re at the vegetable gardens.
FLORENCE MBOKAZI: This garden is for the children, the orphans, we’re trying to teach the children something they can do like to make the garden. Because we provide with food, clothes, uniforms, so we said ah-ah, let’s try to teach them something they can do themselves so they do the garden now. This garden is for them.
SUE: The project cares for some 1 700 children who are orphaned or living in families where parents are too sick to care for them. The Masoyi Project is thoroughly integrated into the community and works closely with traditional leaders, school principals and teachers. Part of its success lies also in the good working relationship it has cultivated with local and provincial government.
FLORENCE MBOKAZI: We are working hands to hands with all departments. ‘ education, dept of health, dept of welfare, we are working with social worker, teachers and social workers. So all these departments, we are hands to hands. We refer each other. Like the department of education, if they get children they refer in a school, when they see its in need that particular child, they refer to home based care. And then the department of health, if they see these people have TB but they don’t have food, we have food, they refer to us. If if we see people who need a drip we refer to department of health. Also department of welfare, we find the children who must gets grants. We refer to them. While they’re waiting for the grant, the social workers they refer to us as home based care to give food and everything until they get the grants.
SIMON MGWENYA: My name is Simon Mgwenya, I stay at Masoyi, I’m 22 years old.
SUE: As part of its integrated approach to care, Masoyi runs courses for young men and women teaching sewing and building skills.
SIMON MGWENYA: I’m one of the trainees in the Masoyi lifes skills and building programme and I’m the head builder and the leader of the team.
SUE: How did you get involved in this programme?
SIMON MGWENYA: When I finished matric I couldn’t further my studies, so I joined the programme as a volunteer. Here we are resurrecting the buildings to start a crèche, and there’ll be a social workers’ office, and a nurses’ office where orphans and patients the project is looking after will come here and be examined and young kids who will go to the crèche. And in the afternoons there’ll be other lifeskills programmes for other orphans.
SUE: Have you seen a growing number of orphans in recent years?
SIMON MGWENYA: Yes. It has grown quite a lot ‘ everyday there’s funerals everywhere, if you go out into the community you’ll see people going to bury someone. So everyday there’s new cases and orphans every day.
SUE: Masoyi Home Based Care provides vitamins, pain relief and treatment for diarrhoea and vomiting. I asked Florence Mbokazi if there were other medications they would like to provide but can’t.
FLORENCE MBOKAZI: If government maybe can give us the drugs for people who are HIV+, to make them better, these are the tablets I worry about.
SUE: You mean the antiretrovirals?
FLORENCE MBOKAZI: Yes.
SUE: Those are the ones for people who are sick with AIDS-related illnesses.
FLORENCE MBOKAZI: Yes. That one.
SUE: It’s not available yet?
FLORENCE MBOKAZI: No, not in Masoyi Home Based Care, we don’t have, but we hear that the people from the Department of Health will come and tell us how we can get these drugs. We need that drugs, really. Because people are getting sick and sick and sick.
NOTE: Antiretroviral therapy is in fact available in the area through the work provided by the ACTS Clinic (Aids Care Training & Support), a non-profit, hospice-affiliated clinic based in the Masoyi area which has been providing antiretroviral therapy to people who need the treatment since April 2004. Although it is not yet widely available in the public health sector in the province.
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A comprehensive, creative response Living with AIDS #191
by healthe, Health-e News
September 23, 2004