Caring for People Affected by HIV & AIDS in Nepal

The young generation is a key to fight HIV pandemic and AIDSLink Nepal is busy engaging with these people so that they may be able to preserve those who are not infected. The team is busy recruiting young people to be part of their team so that they can send them into different parts of the country to do this work of HIV. Some people they are staying in the deep rural areas with the hosting families, and this is really encouraging to see some of the workers who have worked in rural areas are making a difference in the communities.

These workers are engaged in hospitals, home visits and schools. The team had the opportunity to go to 5 different schools in Siraha and Syangja Districts. The school’s admin gave them time to go to different classes.  The AIDSLink Team was happy to take the classes and this was a golden opportunity to the team. The school principal of the school appreciated the AIDSLink Team for visiting their school and teaching HIV and AIDS awareness in classes because this topic is part of the curriculum, and this made it easier for the team to share.

The principal of the school was open to the team, and he shared that the students are not open to the school staff on this area of HIV but surprisingly saw the difference when AIDSLink team were at their school. The students were open and friendly with AIDSLink team, and they learnt a lot about HIV and AIDS.

One girl from 12^th grade said, ‘Before, I learned that the couples who are living with HIV cannot have children but now I know that they can have children.’ This kind of stories are many where people think people living with HIV cannot have children but the health has proven that they can have children and can actually give birth to HIV negative babies.

Sometimes our plans don’t go according to how we thought!

We had planned to have a workshop on healthy families and HIV and AIDS Awareness  at Chapakot.  We arrived on Sunday as the training was to start the next day. We woke up on Monday morning with hope to see new people, but as time passed, no one came. One hour later a sick woman came. I did not understand completely what was happening.  We gathered together with the lady and we sang a couple of songs.  Shortly after that, participants slowly started to arrive at the venue.  Sixteen people came for the training and three of them were touched in a significant way.

One baby boy was unable to suck from his mother breast.  Our team member visited their family and interacted together with the woman.That night he began to suckle successfully! A baby girl was sick with stomach pain, headache and vomiting.  Her parents asked us to pray for her and after three days she was completely healed!

The first woman we mentioned had many different problems in her life. She was feeling alone and not feeling loved.  She had fear because of all the stress and anger.  She joined us for the four days of training.  Every day after training we interacted with her and listened.  By the end of our time together, she was so much better than when she arrived.   

We did not have plans to visit any schools, but a door opened to go to one, and so we did.  The school head principle gave two hours’ time for HIV and AIDS Awareness class.  We had 22 students join us from the 6th, 7th and 8^th gradeclasses. They learned how HIV is transmitted and how it is not transmitted.  All the students were interested to listen to the story and learn action songs. 

We found that even though our original plans did not go the way we had thought they would go, it turned out even better!