thoughts from the village of hope around world AIDS day...

stories in the news around HIV can be confusing, on the one hand we hear that there has been a 'dramatic drop in new infection rates' and 'that mother to child transmission is falling', and on the other hand there are 'reports of a more dangerous strain of the HIV virus in west africa' and that 'adolescence dying from AIDS in south africa is on the increase', what are we to believe on 'world aids day' in 2013?

well we will now provide you with four stories that have impacted us in grabouw over the last four weeks where we are really feeling the effects of the loss of our full time ARV doctor at our local hospital, not all of these stories can be attributed to the fact that we have lost probably one of the most amazing and caring HIV specialists in south africa and we don't want to get into the politics of all that here but the facts on the ground are pointing to more suffering and even deaths due to the changes that have been made.

the facts are that two of our children, one who we discharged back to his mother in 2010 and another who is still living with us have had mothers dying due to the effects of HIV, with another mother of two siblings who were placed with us for a period, also 2010, dying of cancer, perhaps with HIV complications during this last month.

further to the news of those dear mom's, two of whom were still in their twenties, and the other under the age of forty passing, one of our security guards has been off ill and upon his return he looked awfully gaunt and told us that he was suffering from TB, another disease which is prevalent in our town and is often linked to HIV, we are praying that he continues to take his medication and that he welcomes the home visits that our wonderful thembacare careworks will make to ensure he follows his course to the end, however he didn't report for work this morning and we are full of worries about his health.

it's not all doom and gloom as we are seeing progress via our careworkers, rainbow smiles (our weekly adolescent support group) and our sports outreach health and lifeskills training but when we were discussing the worries around our patients one colleague said that 'we aren't waiting for the time bomb to go off' we are literally 'picking up the pieces of a bomb that has already exploded'.....

...therefore please think and pray for us on this world AIDS day 2013 as we seek to serve our children, their parents and the wider community, all of whom are affected by HIV and TB and many of whom are infected by those two debilitating but not life threatening diseases!