Letter from Alive Medical Services

The following letter is from Dr. Pasquine Ogunsanya, Medical Director of Alive Medical Services (AMS) in Kampala, Uganda. Not just an HIV/AIDS clinic, AMS also provides infection treatment, transport, nutritional support, lab services and general care. Through the help of Keep a Child Alive, AMS currently provides comprehensive care to over 750 people in their community.

I believe that as KCA, our focus is to provide children and families with life saving comprehensive HIV and AIDS care and support as well as prevention. For so long, children have been neglected, especially when they have HIV, and yet they have the right to enjoy their childhood, to be loved, protected...etc.

One time Leigh sent me a questionnaire and one of the questions was: what can we do to reach more children? That set me thinking for some time and seeing the miracle of how KCA's more than one hundred children on ARVs, nutrition, and care are doing very well, I knew we had to do something special for our kids.

Our intention was to start something special for the kids, something that will give them quality of life and hope as soon as possible; but you know we are also just learning, and setting up AMS took much of our time and the fact that the work is growing so rapidly.

So we decided to start having the last Friday of every month as "Child's Day."

This is a day when all our HIV positive children (over 150 on ARVs) from 0 to 18 years and mothers/fathers come to the clinic and we carry out various exciting, interactive and educative activities focused on them.

We use this opportunity to get to know them personally, to know how they are doing at home, in school, health monitoring, with medication etc. We show them we love them and value them and they will grow up and be great people in future.

We talk about adherence, we make them know they are a point of HIV prevention, we allow them to ask questions about things that bother them etc. We have also drawn topics on primary health care, reproductive health, etc.

27th February was our day of getting to interact and ask questions/games/fun

27th March we talked about hygiene and sanitation/games/fun

24th April we talked about Nutrition/fun etc

In all the sessions, we have 4 groups:

1st group are 0 to 2 years and their mothers. We discuss with the mothers on child health and also the topic of the day.

2nd group are age 3 to 8 years

3rd group are age 9 to 15

4th group are age 16 to 18.

We have fun activities in each group like singing, dancing, games, competition etc

Each time also we pay for an after noon at the next door football field for games, sports etc.

Note that all the children in the pictures are HIV positive

In Feb we had 130 children, 17 mothers and 3 fathers

In march over 150 children, 20 mothers and 4 fathers.

All staff are actively involved and each time we have about 10 volunteers come to join us.

Thank you,

Dr. Pasquine Ogunsanya

Pictures below are from the April Child's Day that focused on nutrition.

Community Members at Alive Medical Services

Age group 3 - 8

Parents and children in the 0 - 2 age group

Age group 9 - 15 in the back shade at AMS

I am Where I am Because of Where I Have Been

Cecy Dlamini, 19, lives in Soweto, South Africa with her siblings, nieces, and nephews. After her mother passed away from complications with AIDS 6 years ago, Cecy has been responsible for caring for her family. Through the help of Ikageng Itireleng AIDS Ministry and Keep a Child Alive, Cecy has been able to raise her family and attend school. As she has a passion for writing and journalism, Cecy has decided to share her story with you.

Chapter 4 - After Brian's Death

After Brian's death I fell into a deep depression and all I could do was wonder what he was thinking in his last seconds, if he was afraid and if I wished I could have been there to comfort him. I felt like a had a giant hole or an ice cold iron ball weighing two tons in my stomach. For months after his death I felt betrayed, that something so precious and priceless had been stolen from me and I could never get it back. I hated the world and everyone in it, including myself, for not stopping this obvious injustice from occuring in the very first place.

When I was 15 years old I came home one day and swallowed a whole bottle of my late brother's painkillers and hoped like hell that my death would come as quickly and as painlessly as possible. I must have fainted on the kitchen floor because when I regained consciousness I was laying on my back with my entire family surrounding me while we waited for the ambulance. It was not until three years later that I finally knew myself well enough to know that my intention on that day was not to simply end my life, but it was to put an end to the excruciating pain I called my life.

Today, three years on, knowing all the things I know now that I did not have the privilege of knowing then I can not believe how far I have come, not only myself but my whole family too. Sometimes I look at each one of them and I just cannot fight back the tears of pride. I know now the truth in the saying: everything happens for a reason, because as horrid as it was going through it, I know now that had I not lost my mother at the tender age of only 13 years, I would not even be half the woman that I am today. I have learned so many lessons through these hardships and none less important than the next. All the lessons that I learned from my mother, both from intentional lectures and silent observations on my part, give me the courage to carry on in the hopes that I will one day be at least half the woman she was.

I am Where I am Because of Where I Have Been

Cecy Dlamini, 19, lives in Soweto, South Africa with her siblings, nieces, and nephews. After her mother passed away from complications with AIDS 6 years ago, Cecy has been responsible for caring for her family. Through the help of Ikageng Itireleng AIDS Ministry and Keep a Child Alive, Cecy has been able to raise her family and attend school. As she has a passion for writing and journalism, Cecy has decided to share her story with you.

Chapter 3 - Brian

At the time of my father's death, my mother was seven months pregnant with Bruce and Brian. Ever since the day they were born, Brian had always been very weak. At first my mother dismissed it as a the myth that in each pair of twins there will always be one who is weaker than the other half. But the sickness persisted and Brian tested positive for HIV, but the ironic thing is that Bruce tested negative on the same test. Things became especially unbearable for all of us when my brother Brian started falling ill from opportunistic illnesses caused by HIV.

More often than not both my mother and brother would be hospitalised at the same time at the same hospital, HIV wracking their immune systems. But there is a day that stands out in my mind. It was a time when Brian's body was so swollen that it was twice its normal size and he was experiencing very painful blisters all over his body. For two days he screamed in sheer agony. He could not even sleep because pressure on those blisters caused them to burst which caused him to let out a cry for help which brought us all to our knees.

Brian had not been hospitalised for years since my mother's death, and we were all convinced that we had caught a very lucky break as he seldom complained of discomfort or pain in those days. Unfortunately we were in for a very rude awekening. Brian suddenly fell very ill very quickly only three months after my sister Sandile's death in 2005. After a dreadful week in which his naturally small frame had deteriorated into mere skin and bones, he could fight no longer. He was lying in the same bed that my mother had laid in less than three years prior, and he asked me to make some porridge for him. I was especially proud of him at that moment as it had been a struggle getting him to eat anything all week, not that there was much to eat in any case. All that we had to eat for two weeks was porridge. I dished the cooked porridge up into the biggest bowl I could find and to my surprise he devoured every last spoonful of it.

Little did I know that that would be his very last meal. I got up to take the bowl to the kitchen area and halfway to the kitchen something inside me told me to go back to him, and to my absolute horror there he lay, luke warm and limp with his head hanging from his neck. I remember seeing almost a smile on his beautiful face. I had experienced a lot of loss in my life before that, with the deaths of first my father, then my mother, then my older sister and now an innocent little child whose only crime was being born into this dreadful disease. That moment single handedly destroyed me. Brian's passing away felt like the last nail in my own coffin.

Planting Hope: The Blue Roof Clinic Community Garden

The Blue Roof Clinic in Durban, South Africa is the first clinic wholly owned and operated by Keep a Child Alive, bringing our dream of comprehensive HIV care to life in a community where its services are desperately and urgently needed. The clinic moved into its brand new state-of-the-art facility in December, and as word spreads in the community about the treatment and care offered here, our patient numbers continue to rise!

The beautiful new building!

The VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing) and psychosocial support programs at the Blue Roof are managed by our brilliant counselors, Thuli, Kathy and Cynthia. For our clients who test HIV negative, they counsel them on safe sex practices, and encourage them to return every three months to be re-tested. For our clients who test positive, drug adherence classes are offered three times a week, in English and Zulu. One of the challenges we have encountered is that many of our patients have difficulty coming to the clinic on a regular basis because they cannot afford bus fare. The clinic is currently developing empowerment programs that can be offered to our patients in the early mornings, so patients can be dropped off at the clinic early by their friends en route to work, learn a skill and then stay for their adherence classes.

Another challenge the clinic is facing is the need to educate the families of our patients, especially those in more rural areas. The stigma associated with HIV continues to be an obstacle to our AIDS relief efforts. Many of our patients have told our counselors how they lost the support of their families once they found out they were HIV positive. Can you imagine? One woman recently came in for her doctor’s appointment, starving, because her sisters would not let her cook food from the same pots and pans they used, and she had not eaten in days. The Blue Roof Clinic team is exploring ways that we can extend our psychosocial support services to our patient families, to help break the stigma that results in such physical and emotional abuse.

The psychosocial support program at the Blue Roof also offers a support group for patients every Thursday, and last week they began planting in the community garden! You could see everyone having such a wonderful time, planting all the different seeds. They planted all sorts of vegetables, which, once grown, will be used to prepare nutritious meals for clinic patients on a daily basis.

Preparing the seeds

Preparing the soil

Cynthia, one of our VCT counselors

What a beautiful team effort!

Moussa, our groundskeeper

It is so inspiring to see how simple a task can empower people. The Blue Roof Clinic is working hard to develop more activities like the community garden for our patients to participate in, so moments like these can grace the clinic all the more often, and so our patients will have items like the garden that they can look at and say with pride, “I was a part of that.”

I am Where I am Because of Where I Have Been

Cecy Dlamini, 19, lives in Soweto, South Africa with her siblings, nieces, and nephews. After her mother passed away from complications with AIDS 6 years ago, Cecy has been responsible for caring for her family. Through the help of Ikageng Itireleng AIDS Ministry and Keep a Child Alive, Cecy has been able to raise her family and attend school. As she has a passion for writing and journalism, Cecy has decided to share her story with you.

Chapter 2 - My Life was Forever Changed

Our mother made certain that we went to school and that we did well. I was always the best student in my class and I always got the highest grades and that made her very proud. She was always present at all my prize giving ceremonies, even though she had to walk very long distances in order to be there for me. She unconsciously instilled an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and education.

I remember a few months before she passed away, she had fallen severely ill and needed urgent medical attention. I gave myself a day off from school in order to take her to our nearest clinic which is about a kilometer from my home. It was one of the coldest days I have ever experienced, but I still wore my school uniform as it was the only outfit I had. I had outgrown it and I remember feeling like my legs were freezing and wiping mucous from my mother's nose as we waited in the cold to be attended to. We must have been there for three hours before we were helped by one of the nurses. My mother made me promise not to tell the others about what had happened because she did not want to worry them. From that experience I learned that unconditional love meant truly putting another person's needs way ahead of your own, at any cost.

The months subsequent to that day were consciously stored away in a secret safe in the back of my mind and I intentionally forgot the combination so as never to see its contents again. My mother's health deteriorated and one Wednesday evening I remember seating next to her as she tried to sleep, in so much pain that with each sound she made I felt my insides rip open like an old piece of cloth. It was three hours later that one of the children made a noise that was loud enough to brake the trance-like state I was in with my dying mother. I will eternally be grateful for that last night with her because it is what gave me the closure I so desperately needed and the opportunity say my goodbye and cry with her until I could cry no more.

A social worker who was doing house calls recommended that she be sent to a hospice the next day. That Saturday at 8:15 in the morning, Sheila Dlamini drew her last breath. The hospital called to notify us and my legs felt as if they were glued to the floor, a sharp pain consumed me. From that moment on, my life was forever changed.

I am Where I am Because Of Where I Have Been

Cecy Dlamini, 19, lives in Soweto, South Africa with her siblings, nieces, and nephews. After her mother passed away from complications with AIDS 6 years ago, Cecy has been responsible for caring for her family. Through the help of Ikageng Itireleng AIDS Ministry and Keep a Child Alive, Cecy has been able to raise her family and attend school. As she has a passion for writing and journalism, Cecy has decided to share her story with you.

Chapter 1 - Mother's Struggles

If there ever was a woman who completely and without any reservations, adored her children and was ready at a moment's notice to lay down her own life for those helpless bundles of joy she had so lovingly borne, it was my mother Sheila Dlamini. From her I learned that dignity and selfworth are qualities that are deeply sewn in one's soul and that even in the most desperate of situations one could still retain both. My mother would have rather died a thousand deaths before she let any harm to come to her children, and she tried to protect us from all things harmful.

When I was five years old my mother was pregnant with the twins, Bruce and Brian, and my father passed away due to severe malaria - or so we were told. What inexplicable pain my mother must have felt at the news of her husband's death, with four children already in existence and two more on the way.

In the years subsequent to my father's passing, my mother - who was illiterate - begged, borrowed, and almost stole before she worked as the only female construction worker in a railway company. After working for the railway company she began washing taxis at our local taxi rank. She asked drivers who were getting out of their shiny comfortable cars if she could wash their cars for them at a fee equivalent to one US Dollar.

One cold winter's day she approached a driver and he said she could wash his car. When she had finished her task the man told her that he worked in the building in front of them and that he had left his wallet in his office. He said that she should come to his office to collect it. With nothing in mind but getting enough money to buy food to feed her children back home (who had not eaten in two days), she stepped into the elevator with the man. Half way up the building the man pressed the emergency stop button and proceeded to brutally rape my mother. When he felt that he was satisfied forcing himself on a woman who was half his size he got up, dressed himself and ensured that the elevator procceeded to its destination. Then he left her there.

My mother didn’t have the taxi fare to get back home or money for supper, and she had just been violated in the most horrific of ways by a complete stranger. When she finally did get home that night after begging in the streets for taxi fare, she said nothing about what had happened. She kept the knowledge of the incident to herself until many years later when she shared it with my sister.

World AIDS Day 2008

Today is World AIDS Day. A day to remember, reflect and respond.

Remember our work is not done. There are still many, many people in the impoverished world without access to these life-saving drugs.

Reflect on those that have died because of lack of medicine but also on our accomplishments everyone of you at Keep a Child Alive have helped to achieve.

Respond to the desperate need of all of those unfortunate. To those of you that have responded to our call, we thank you from our hearts.

This year's journey to our sites in Africa brought us such joy and sorrow. There is still so much to do in one of the most beautiful continents in the world. I have written a diary of my journey - come and read about all of our accomplishments on World AIDS Day.

Please go here - READ MY JOURNAL - see what your support has done for those in Africa and remember that our work is not done.

Peace,
Leigh Blake
President

Site Update: Hope Center Clinic

The new Hope Center Clinic in Sikoro, Mali officially opened in June 2008. The incredible Dr. Annie De Groot oversees the KCA-funded clinic, and recently sent us her latest update from the field:

"A very thin woman in a yellow headscarf, who is 28 years old and who waited for over two hours to have her turn in his office today. A small child sits quietly in her lap. The doctor asks her some questions. She speaks softly, coughing as she is answering. A medical student looks at her lab results. She has 20 T cells. He asks her if she had ever been given medication before, and she says yes, but it was a long time ago, and the medicine had run out. The doctor pauses, considering what to do. Her life is in danger, but she has no money to pay for emergency treatment, and the hospital is far away...

This is a place where one in three to four children dies before the age of five, where [in our small clinic] one hundred babies are born every month, where mothers die in labor without so much as uttering a sound. This is a place where, too, a small tree of hope can take root, where green leaves can shine on slender branches, and where hope and dreams can eventually bear fruit...

We built [our clinic] to ease access to care for the hundreds of HIV seropositive patients who are living in this village of 35,000 people. We planted the clinic here at an arm's reach for the patients, like the one we saw today, because we know she will not wish to travel far for her care. We planned the clinic here for our patients because they prefer to see doctors they know will care for them. Those are the doctors who will pause for a moment when confronted with a young woman they know well, and think about her HIV infection in the context of her whole life. What would it mean for this woman, if the doctor made the decision to send her to the hospital far away on the top of the hill? Would she go there? How would she pay for her care? Who would take care of her small child? And what of the family members who would have to travel there to feed her and pay for her care? This is the context of HIV care in West Africa. These are the real barriers to good health.

Our new clinic has an infirmary where she will be able to get care. Our new clinic has a new laboratory, where we will be able to see if she has tuberculosis, and a new conference room where we will be able to plan her return to her home [only a few streets away], where we'll map out her directly observed TB treatment therapy visits, and her follow up care.

The need is great, and the cost is small. For less than $35,000, we have created a space where patients can receive the care they need right near their home. The number of HIV patients in our care has increased from less than 20 a year ago to 120 today...

Because of our work [together], a young woman, 28 years old, who has a small child to take care of, will be here tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. She will get better. This is no small thing to achieve, in a clinic that sits at the farthest corner of this Earth."

Nyamila Video!

KCA College Regional Leader Jennifer Salazar spent this summer volunteering in Kenya, and organized a visit to the Nyamila Community Center in Siaya!

Nyamila Community Center provides clean water, food, school materials and access to medical services to 137 children and their surviving caregivers in 47 households. Nyamila is also working to generate more conversation about AIDS in the community, by empowering several HIV+ individuals to openly talk about the disease, something that was unheard of in this area until now!

Jennifer visited the site with her fellow students from the University of Oklahoma and representatives from the Maisha International Orphanage. Her friend, Mark Nehrenz, created a fantastic video documenting their trip to Nyamila this summer. Check it out!

Meet Noah

Meet Noah. He is 15 years old and HIV positive. Noah lives in Rwanda and raps in his community to educate people about HIV prevention. He is a patient at the Icyuzuzo Clinic in Kigali, funded by Keep a Child Alive.

Click here to meet Noah.

Anti-retroviral medication has made it possible for Noah to be alive today. Help keep Noah and children like him alive.

Vote for Keep a Child Alive to win $2.5 million from the American Express Members Project.

If you do not have an AMEX card, you MUST vote by Monday, September 1st!

Voting only takes a minute - so CLICK HERE to NOMINATE NOW!

Once you have Voted, email or call at least 5 friends and make sure they Vote too! Help us start a virus to end a virus and share this video with everyone you know!

Bomu Medical Centre

The KCA team recently visited the Bomu Medical Centre, based on the outskirts of Mombasa, Kenya. Mombasa is a small town on the East African seaboard, which operates largely as a trading center for much of the African continent.

Bomu Medical Centre is putting life back into communities that have been devastated by the AIDS pandemic. Bomu specializes in providing treatment and surrounding care to the poor affected and infected with HIV. When Keep A Child Alive started funding Bomu, they were treating 157 patients on ARV’s. Today, the hospital receives more than 250 new patients every month and currently has 1500 children on treatment. In the last two years, Bomu has treated 10,000 patients for HIV infection!

Click here to see Bomu’s warm welcome to our KCA team’s arrival:

These highly energized women are patients of ours that first came to Bomu on the brink of death. Since they began receiving treatment, they have become positive role models in their community, working to help change the face of AIDS.

All of these women are valuable players in Bomu’s new community outreach program that gets people talking about AIDS in an effort to break down the stigma that surrounds the disease. They are also working with the HIV-positive children in their community to ensure that they continue to receive the medication they need on a regular basis.

Sakia Mohamed is a Community Health Worker at Bomu. Click here to hear more from Sakia:

01:03:04 Most of the clients that we have, they are below poverty level. And they live in a slum, at the average of 36,000 people. And they are really poor. They cannot take their medicine on an empty stomach. So, what we do, sometimes we assist them or we help them. We take their cards, get the medicine for them, and give it to them. But you cannot do that all the time. Because they cannot get transport, or they cannot afford even half a dollar in a day. And most of them are mothers, with kids. Some mothers have 3-4 kids who are positive. 01:06:22 That's why you find, most of the people will not come forward to be tested. They are scared. And that is stigma and discrimination. And some of them have accepted that they are HIV positive, but there is discrimination and stigma. 01:06:50 And HIV does not kill, stigma kills. Because nobody will take care of you, nobody will protect you, will talk to you. You will always eat by yourself. You will always sit at the corner on your own. You don't have anybody to talk to. Nobody is there, nobody is interested. So this is why, most of the African community, this is what is happening in between them. 01:14:02 Bomu is a beautiful clinic. Bomu is doing a lot. Bomu is helping a lot of people. Bomu is helping a lot of men, women, just name it! Bomu is doing a lot with Keep a Child Alive. So, whoever is there, please assist Keep a Child Alive. Please, please, I beg you.

Bomu continues to expand to address the growing need for treatment in its community. Dr. Zahir Alavi is the Medical Director at Bomu. According to Dr. Alavi, the HIV prevalence rate in the area has risen from 5.9% to 8% within the last year. The hospital is currently undergoing construction to accommodate more patients.

Click here to hear more from Dr. Alavi:

19:30 So it began as a very small project, but over time, because of the scale of the problem, it's really really blossomed into a full institution that now provides outpatient facilities to those infected. And especially from the slum areas – as you may see when you go around Bomu – surrounded by a lot of slums, and all the poor that live here, have absolutely no other way of getting assistance towards their treatment of the HIV infection. Even though the government and institutions are there, and they have programs that are providing these services, they're just overwhelmed. There are not enough institutions, there are not enough doctors, there are not enough health care providers, and there are not enough drugs. 23:50 We just have to get up more clinics, we just have to get in more labs, and more support facilities so that these patients can get the right care, can get the right access, and can get all the drugs and all the tests that are required with keeping these people on this kind of care. This is the way we are, this is the help we need.

Beatrice's Story, Kampala, Uganda

UGANDA - Beatrice knows firsthand the fear and uncertainty of women left widowed by AIDS. Her husband died, leaving her without any means to care for their tiny baby girl and young daughter. Her health began to fail, confirming what she had already suspected: she too was sick with HIV. Then she learned that both her little girls had HIV. Sick, poor, and completely alone, Beatrice was living every parent’s worst nightmare. She could not care for herself or her children, and because of her HIV, they inherited her terrible fate at birth.

Keep A Child Alive’s funding of a new free clinic, near her home gave Beatrice a chance to hope for the first time since her husband became sick. There, she was able to start on ARV treatment and begin treatment for her daughters. She was able to get food to feed her family and encouragement, love and support for their recovery. Soon, she was able to see a transformation taking place in their health, and her new strength led to optimism.

Today, Beatrice owns a small retail shop and is able to provide for her family. Her daughters continue to do well on their medication and now can enjoy the simple joys of being children. As leader of a support group for people with HIV, she uses her own story to show that there is a way out of despair and an open hand to gently guide the way.