Saturday, May 19, 2007

Thembalethu "Our Hope" Overview

Thembalethu, a project supported by the Winterton Methodist Church, is a response to expand local initiatives, caring for the sick and orphaned in the Amangwe Tribal Area (Loskop). Its vision is:

To share God’s love and hope to the communities struck by HIV/AIDS through training, empowerment and linkages to resources, assisting those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS and poverty.

The Situation:


* 40% of adults (officially, likely much higher) in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa are HIV positive – making it one of the top global hotspots for the AIDS epidemic

*1.2 Million South African children have been orphaned by AIDS (UNICEF, 2005)

*25% of all South African children suffer from stunting due to malnutrition (UNICEF, 2005)

*The Amangwe Tribal Area has active volunteer home based caregivers (HBC), well-poised to advocate and care for the sick and orphaned in their communities, many have been caring for their sick and orphaned neighbours for over five years with very limited outside support or assistance.

The Project:

A group of well-trained HBC volunteers, working at the most grassroots level offer tremendous hope to alleviate the depth of suffering the Amangwe community is currently experiencing. As health promoters for the healthy, advocates for the sick and community caregivers for orphaned children these amazing volunteers can do a lot to bring God’s love and hope to this community.

Training home-based care givers: Training ranges from HIV/AIDS education, motivating people to get tested for HIV, Christian spiritual care, home hospice care, accessing and supporting patients on Anti-Retroviral medicines (ARVs), opportunistic infections, & community support of orphans.

Empowering community advocates: Informing and educating local volunteers in specified processes necessary to access government resources (birth certificates, ID’s, social grants) and assertiveness training to ensure that the needy receive assistance.

Linking communities to resources: Thembalethu works together with government community development staff, local hospital and clinics to better service the sick and orphaned in the Amangwe community. Interested HBC volunteers receive training and micro-loans to support home businesses (sewing, food reselling, etc).

Bringing assistance and hope to the sick and orphaned: HBC Volunteers help the sick access the medical assistance they need, help orphans obtain birth certificates and social grants, and sustain income-generating projects to provide an income source for orphans and vulnerable children.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

7 May: New Wheels and Getting Started

7 May 2007


I feel I’ve really gotten started into the Emangweni community over the last week. The most exciting development is of course getting a new bakkie (pick-up truck)! I borrowed Sofi’s a couple of times over the past few weeks, but it’s been SUCH a blessing to not have to worry about the roads I drive on to get to meetings, to visit patients. And of course, having the capacity to transport patients regularly is exciting! The Home-Based Caregivers have been thrilled to see the snazzy new car, and know that it’s dedicated to helping them assist the sick and orphans in their community. It has a door-type canopy that is ideal for getting people in, and transporting lots of people in the back.


I have continued to meet with the various groups of home-based caregivers throughout Amangwe, and they continue to bring up difficult cases that seem to be stuck. In Tatane I went with the HBC to visit a 46 year old HIV+ man who had virtually been abandoned as a child by his mother, and thus has never had a birth certificate or an ID. He was not allowed to do a CD4 test to check his immune system strength because of this, thus ARV treatment (Anti-retroviral drug cocktail is the life-saving life-long treatment for AIDS) remains out of his reach. (This is actually against the law, as it has recently been changed to allow access to free treatment to all needing it, regardless of their documentation status.) I’ll be working with the ARV clinic at Estcourt Hospital on this one, as this is certainly the first case like this of many. Today, in fact, while sitting at the Injisuthi Clinic waiting for a patient to give blood for the CD4 test, I saw how all the HIV+ maternity cases were not allowed to get their CD4 count taken if they didn’t have their ID on them, much less if they didn’t even have one. I know that Sofi has worked out a system through Emmaus Hospital to get these sick patients without ID documents on ARVs anyhow, so I’m confident there’s a way forward.


Later in the week at HBC meetings in Mandabeni, they had called a sick patient, and the grandmother of orphans in to receive assistance. The sick mother lives entirely alone with her teenaged children and has no family to support her and no income. She is suffering from what appears to be a repeat case of TB, as well as being HIV+. I organized to take her in to get a CD4 count taken (again – the blood sample was wasted the first time), and take the TB sputum test. I took her in together with another patient from Mqedandaba needing to start TB treatment, and do the CD4 count. After one false-start at the clinic, and nearly being turned away the second time (because of lack of transport of blood samples to the hospital the first day and, because the VCT counselor was away, and then the blood sample bottles ran out), both patients gave blood for their CD4 counts today. Additionally, Xoli and I did home visits in KwaVala and Ngunjini to a 47 year old bed-ridden stroke-patient, a patient on ARVs (who was having very bad urinary blockages – we called the ambulance and he died the next day in the hospital), and a patient who was unwilling to reveal any health information to the HBC volunteers, but who committed to get tested.


Today I met with the social workers whose office is adjacent to the Injasuthi clinic, and who work under an NGO called (Amangwe) Child Welfare South Africa. I have been aware over the past three years of the tremendous turnover of social workers in Amangwe, and the tremendous backlog that has been created as a result. I spoke with them about these challenges of the past, and current mismanagement that has 60 cases of orphaned families waiting for over five months for the superior to sign off on before they go to court. As a result, these 60 families who are caring for from 1-4 orphans continue to be withheld foster care income to care for the orphaned children. At the social workers’ request, I committed to contact their superiors to follow-up on the gross negligence. Additionally, we made a plan to utilise the HBC and community health workers to assist them in contacting the applicants (from 2003 to the present) in areas that the HBC are working to check that their situation remains the same. The HBC will help contact the applicants in their areas, and I will help transport them to the Social Workers to save time in the process of checking up on their details and status to reopen the untended cases. I’m happy to see there is a potential way out of this big social welfare mess in Amangwe – a way to really help orphans in the area. And maybe a way to encourage the social workers into sticking around longer if their working conditions (ie. Less of a backlog) improve. Time will tell.