Health – Helping those living with HIV/AIDS

At the request of the widows we formed a sub group of widows and children living openly with AIDS. The members of this group are also members of one of the widows groups (or their mother is a member).

The group met and helped us to understand what the difficulties are of being a widow in rural Uganda and also suffering from the effects of HIV/AIDS. The issues that they raised included:
•    Income - Difficulty in earning income, due to their weak bodies they have difficulty working the backbreaking manual labor that is the source of income for most rural women. (Able women typically receive $0.60 – $1.20 for a full days work of turning soil with a hoe.) Doctors have also told them that they should not be doing this kind of work.
•    Transportation - In order to get access to Septrine and ARVs (AIDS medicine) they need to be able to pay for transport to the near by town where there are free HIV/AIDS clinics and free AIDS medicine. Transportation can cost up to $3.00 each way. One trip a month to the doctor gets them medicine but costs them about a weeks worth of work, if they are even able to do this work.
•    Healthy Food, vitamins and mosquito nets – Doctors have told them that they need to be eating more vitamin rich food, more food and should be sleeping under mosquito nets. Most of these women do not have the strength to grow more and better food, they cannot pay for mosquito nets or vitamin supplements.
•    Funds for emergency trips to the hospital – Women and children suffering from AIDS fall sick more often and more severely than other people but in Uganda, in addition to the cost of transportation, visiting the doctor and getting medicine costs money, money they normally do not have resulting in either debt or death.

We tried to address the issues raised by the members of this HIV/AIDS group and together we came up with a plan.

•    The adult members of this group received a pig each to raise, half the money raised from the pig would go to support health projects for this group including food and vitamin supplements and emergency medical funds. The other half would supplement the income of these HIV+ women.
•   Our truck drives the widows to the doctor once a month, drastically reducing the cost of transportation as they simply divide the cost of the fuel. The group receives a donation to cover this cost until the pigs start producing.
•    The children were given vitamins and mosquito nets, the adults were given mosquito nets.
•    Medical loans (including the ability to repay the loan) are provided to members for other illnesses.
•    Free transportation in the truck once a month to non-members who want to go and get tested for HIV, if they find they are HIV+ they can then join the group, if they choose to. This July in support of this project, the first two widows groups decided to all get tested for HIV, over 60 women were transported to the near by hospital to get tested.

Due to free access to transportation for testing we have new members joining as they discover their HIV+ status. We would like to be able to provide each new member with a pig, mosquito nets and vitamin supplements which costs $25.

We are also in need of funds to be able to provide all of our widows with medical loans as they are needed. These loans range from $6 to $200.