Give life for 55 HIV children in Tamilnadu, India

With the help of our donors from GlobalGiving, Chevaliar Roche Society conducted Give life program for 55 HIV Children. The main objective of the program is to increase access to care and support to 55 children infected by HIV/AIDS through providing Counselling, educational support & provision of health mix. We aim to reduce to depression created by the external factors and induce life skills so that they are well equipped to handle complicated situations in the future. We would also provide psychosocial support including care, comfort and counselling.

I have taken special care for this 55 HIV Children’s project as I was involved in international HIV/AIDS, Allaince, London aided PWDS-Community based care and support  project for the past 9 years. As I have involved in the PWDS-CBCS project I have a good relationship with the HIV infected children. I also wanted the HIV infected children to be well off in the future. At that time Global giving along with CRS appointed me as the project co-ordinator for this project. I was happy that I can give my full effort for the sake of the HIV infected children.

We began this project early in the month by introducing us to the HIV positive federation and Thoothukudi ART centre. We explained the project to them and they guaranteed their full support for the success of the program.  We have mentioned 55 HIV children for the project but unfortunately we lost 6 children due to the impact of HIV. As ART’s medical officer suggested we inducted 6 new HIV infected children.

We have been in regular touch with the 55 HIV infected children conducting frequent home visits and most of the parents are weak. Their health is so weak that they are not able to look after them and their children’s needs. As they are economically weak they are not able to satisfy their children’s basic amenities. Due to various external factors (stigma and discrimination) the children and their parents become depressed. Our home visits help them recover quickly and we were able to see the happiness in their face.

One of the important aspects of the home visit is Counselling. We aim to induce skills to the children during counselling. I will be visiting all the children weekly twice for home visits and continuous counselling ( Psycho-social support). We also aim to give importance to their health care, self care, good nutrition and Anti Retro Viral(ART) adherence.

In order to provide nutritional support we invited the children to CRS- DEROSE centre. This program was conducted on 25.10.2011. We assembled the children in the DEROSE centre. The main objective of the program is to provide health mix (nutritional support) and counselling to the HIV infected children. The children got to know with each other and they shared their experiences with one another.

                                       Mrs. Jeevan(Transgender), president of Thoothukudi HIV positive federation delivered the presidential address. Special address was delivered by Mrs. Selvi, President of Thoothukudi Positive Women welfare society and by Mrs. Mangai, Counsellor, ART centre, Thoothukudi.

Keeping families together depends on the health of family members. So Health mix is essential for every HIV children for keeping them fit and fine. We distributed health mix to all the HIV children. Counselling was given by professional counsellors to the HIV children. The counsellors stressed on the importance of regular medical check up to the children. As it was the eve of Diwali, the children were provided with sweet box.

We were able to witness joy in the face of all the children as they rarely get opportunities like this to express themselves. It also gives us more encouragement to do programs to enlighten the life of the burdened HIV children. We are indebted to our donors and Global giving for this.