$50 monthly donation will provide medical care to a person living with AIDS, help us sustain the good work of providing Antiretroviral treatment to People Living With AIDS.
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  • The disturbing mystery of missing HIV/Aids drugs in Uganda, read more!
 
HIV Rapid Test Kits!
 
Your urgent donation of US$ 5, 10, 20, 50, will help us save US$ 723,327, if we dont receive any funds to conduct free HIV Voluntary Counseling & testing in the next 3 months we will, we will have our HIV rapid test kits in our store expire. This project has been heavily affected by the Global recession with majority of our donors cutting donations
 
   
People Living with HIV/AIDS need your care and support, spiritual, social, economic, nutritional & medication e.g ant-retroviral therapy ART e.g. ARV’s. Africa Youth Ministries through our sister organization Living Hope Health Centre, the organization is providing Antiretroviral Therapy and primary health care services to over 1500 people Living with AIDS, and Children Orphaned by AIDS. This is done either at our health centre or through Home Based Care Program (HBM).

Majority of our beneficiaries are urban and rural poor who cannot afford these services, let alone the transport to travel to the nearest Government Health Facility. In the absence of a cure and adequate treatment to reduce damage to the immune system, providing care often means helping people living with HIV/AIDS cope with the psychological and social as well as physical burdens of a chronic and ultimately a chronicle illness.
  
 
 
Africa Youth Ministries/Living Hope Health Centre distribute Food Kits, Beddings, Clothes to People Living With AIDS in Kimwanyi Kira Town Council Wakiso District, participating also was the Executive Director of Christian Communications for International Health USA)
Similarly, HIV positive people need HIV / AIDS education to provide help and support for them, enabling them to understand and to cope with the knowledge that they are infected with HIV. Education for HIV positive people should also help to prevent the onward transmission of HIV.

When receiving a HIV positive test result, many people feel that they have been given a death sentence. HIV / AIDS education and counseling for HIV positive people has several main goals:
· To help people to cope with the trauma of a HIV positive test result.

· To inform HIV positive people about the nature of HIV and AIDS.

· To help them to confront any discrimination they may face as a result of being infected with HIV.

· To enable them to lead full and healthy lives.

· To enable them, should they wish to, to have an active sexual life without passing the infection on to anyone else.

· To ensure that the infection isn't passed on by any other means - the sharing of injecting equipment, for example.
Most people who are HIV positive have acquired the infection from another person through sex, or via injecting equipment, however research reveals that 80% of all HIV infection are a result of Sexual intercourse.

Just as people who are HIV Negative must take responsibility for their own protection, so must people who are HIV positive take responsibility for ensuring that they do not pass the virus on to anyone else.
Gartrude a health worker with Africa Youth Ministries/Living Hope Health Centre gives instructions to patients on how to prepare the food kits. These kits were donated by Alberta Distribution and Relief Agency.
  
Esther a health worker with Living Hope Health Centre provides psycho social counseling to a patient in our Home Based Care program.
Women and Children listen to instructions before the receive their food kits
Nurse Veronica trains VCT & Home Based Care Health Workers in ARV management infection prevention at Living Hope Health Centre.
 
EPIDEMIC BACKGROUND:
AIDS! Acquired immuno deficiency syndrome, initially known as ‘silm’ due to its physically wasting characteristics. It began to spread in Uganda on the shores of lake Victoria in the late 1970s.
1982 the first AIDS case in Uganda was diagnosed. Between 1982 and 1986 there was little understanding of what AIDS was, and it was not known that is was caused by HIV. During this period the epidemic was largely associated to witch craft. During the early 1990s HIV prevalence peaked at over 30% and until recently has been much higher than that in some areas. Uganda is now estimated to have about 1 million people living with HIV/AIDS. Uganda’s ministry of health surveillance unit estimated that there were about 1,050,5557 people living with HIV/AIDS by end of December 2001 and that there had been over 940,000 HIV/AIDS – related deaths since the onset of the epidemic in the country.

HIV/AIDS has not only a social but an economic cost. HIV/ AIDS related expenses in Uganda cost the public services in 1999, and the country’s GDP has fallen, as has the life, expectancy of its population – in 2001, only 44.7 years at birth, of this shs 3 billion, sh192m was for burial expenses. AIDS is known to hamper efforts to reduce poverty, and indeed, often increases the numbers of people living in extreme poverty. As AIDS usually kills sexually-active adults, it tends to strike hardest against a country’s labour –force. The impact has on economic revenues negatively effects the educational and health services and leaves behind orphaned children and grand parents an additional burden on the community or the state.
   
The CEO Africa Youth Ministries hands a food kit, and beddings to a patient in Bulindo Kira Sub-County Wakiso District.
    
The CEO Africa Youth Ministries Mr. KUNIHIRA Albert poses for a photo with Children after a distribution of relief items to families affected by the AIDS epidemic in Kyewanise Mpigi District
 
Staff of Africa Youth Ministries distribute food kits, clothes, and beddings to patients and Children orphaned by AIDS in Kirinya Wakiso District
  
Kanah Florance a Health Worker with Africa Youth Ministries/Living Hope Health Centre educating women on Living Positively.
MAJOR NEEDS FOR PEOPLE LIVING WITH AIDS:
Various needs assessment studies carried out by Africa Youth Ministries focusing on people living with HIV/AIDS and OVC’s in the 15 Districts where we operate reveals that, the general human living conditions of People Living With AIDS & OVC’s e.g. Feeding, Housing, Income Generating activities, Clothing, Beddings, Education, Medication etc, were all horrible.

Our continuous studies have revealed that all people living with HIV/AIDS visited were living in very poor mud & wattle houses or huts. All the houses seen were leaking and they offered no shelter in rainy seasons and others were on the verge of collapsing and others had already collapsed.
Similarly, many cannot afford to cultivate fields to grow food due to ill health that alone resulting in starving, or having one meal a day yet the Anti-retroviral Therapy requires them to eat well to avoid negative side effects by the drugs.

Observed also, is in majority of cases children of PLWA patients dropped of school due to lack of school fees or simply to provide the most needed care to their dying parents. Due to their poor state, PLWA patients can hardly even afford clothes, beddings etc for themselves and Children, leave alone financial disability to cater for their transport to the nearest health centre’s to pick their medication.

In this regard, Africa Youth Ministries together with Living Hope Health Centre, they provided various help in regards to the above mentioned needs including implementing a Home Based Care Program (HBC) providing for both Anti retroviral Therapy (ART) and primary Health Care Services.
Part of the Home Based Care health workers from Africa Youth Ministries/Living Hope Health Centre in the Community
Staff of Living Hope Health Centre and Africa Youth Ministries on a community outreach program providing free Voluntary HIV testing and counseling
A lab technician at Living Hope Health Centre drawing blood from a client for HIV testing
Munana George 35 above together with his wife is HIV positive together with their 5 children and they are not on ARV’s.
Kaloli Mulindwa 63 & wife Toepista 51 years above are both living with AIDS, they have no energy to cultivate their fields. Worse still they have to care & support their 5 grand Children who are equally AIDS Orphans.
The AIDS epidemic being one of the major accelerators of poverty, majority of people living with AIDS cannot afford to buy new clothes for themselves and their Children. Majority of them put on rags and some children stay naked
Children of Rhythm Troup Orphanage established by a retired Lady soldier Lieutenant Ndagano Rose. 100% of the above children are AIDS Orphans. They stay in the orphanage and they attend different schools in the Kyotera Township. Africa Youth Ministries Uganda partners with them through scholastic materials, & feeding.
Nurse Veronica training staff on HIV positive patients case
Economic Empowerment for PLWA
To strengthen the economic capacity of people living with AIDS and OVC’s Africa Youth Ministries has trained many in income generating activities, that is including making of Handcrafts, Poultry, making and selling of snacks. This project has enabled many families to earn a living to buy food, clothes, and to be able to send children to school.
ON-GOING INTERVATIONS:
Currently Africa Youth Ministries is working on the following measures to
make PLWA & OVC's, live better, rewarding and prolonged lives:-
· Increase the number of patients receiving ARV’s from Living Hope Health centre

· Enhance the home based care programto benefit over 1500 PLWA patients

· Provide Mosquito nets

· Provide scholastic materials to Children Orphaned by AIDS & AIDS affected families

· Building of low cost houses for PLWHA, 50 houses have been built so far

· Provide beddings to PLWHA e.g. Blankets, bedsheets, mattresses, etc

· Train PLWHA in income generating activities & provide Micro Finance loans

· Provide free seeds to PLWHA

· Integrating HIV/AIDS awareness & prevention with skills training for OVC’s & People Living With AIDS.

· Increasing information dissemination on HIV/AIDS focusing on young people 12-25 e.g. Primary & secondary schools and out of school youth. This will help them make informed choices about their lives as the only means of preventing new HIV infections in young people. This may include drama staging in schools, introduction of HIV/AIDS focused curriculums in schools,
Ant AIDS posters in schools, leaflets, and other promotion materials

· Intensify efforts on preventing Mother to Child transmission of HIV PMTCT
at Living Hope Health Centre
SECURE ONLINE DONATIONS:

* $10 - Will provide a mosquito bednet to an orphaned child or a person living with AIDS to prevent Malaria as an opportunistic disease.
* $30 - monthly donation will provide healthy and nutrition feeding to a person living with AIDS.
* $40 - Will help us reach 100 people with free HIV Counseling and Testing services.
* $50 - monthly donation will provide medical care to a person living with AIDS.
* $60 - Monthly Donation will facilitate one health worker reach 10 patients in our Home Based Care program in a week
All secure online donations to this program, are done in partnership with Global Giving USA, to continue for online donation.
 
   
     
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