By Rachel Kopunova | Director of Partnership
Hello family, friends, and supporters!
We hope this message finds you enjoying the warm days of summer. We want to thank you all for your support so far this year. GlobeMed at Columbia University has finished the Spring semester strong with several successful fundraisers, raising funds for our project in maternal and newborn health.
We are currently waiting for updates from our this year`s GROW team. They have just returned after spending almost a month in Gulu, Uganda, where they have been tirelessly working to improve our project alongside GWED-G. They have interacted directly with our beneficiaries and have the most up to date idea about what their needs. As a result we can adjust our project`s goals and next year`s budget in order to fit the need of our beneficiaries.
In the meantime, we would like to share with you one of the Stories of Change of one of our beneficiaries, Lillian:
Lillian is a 36-year-old HIV+ mother from Abyer village, in Agwayugi parish, Amuru district. She has 4 children and is currently pregnant with her fifth child. Three of her children are negative, but her youngest daughter, five-year-old Fiona, was born HIV+. Lillian believes she has contracted the virus in 2000, but she was not tested until 2005, when she experienced severe weakness, diarrhea and became dramatically emaciated. Lillian had difficulty accepting the news of her HIV+ status. Due to the stress from her diagnosis and the stigma and discrimination she had to contend with, Lillian became very bitter and violent towards others, including her own children. Feeling isolated and ostracized, Lillian attempted suicide three times. Eventually, she was admitted to Lacor Hospital, a major referral hospital in the region, with an extremely low CD4 count of 40-50. She has suffered seriously due to HIV both psychologically and physically, as the weakness took a toll on her ability to provide for her family.
5 years ago she joined the HIV+ mothers` group. With the help and visits from group leaders and caregivers Betty and Alanyo and her involvement within the group, Lillian has been able to regain her confidence and better confront the realities of living positive. She has learned to largely ignore the stigma and discrimination from the community. She now lives openly with HIV. As a member of the HIV+ mothers` group she has access to GWED-G`s psychological and livelihood support. She received seed donations through GWED-G but, unfortunately, at the time she was too ill to maintain her garden and, therefore, unable to reap the benefits from the harvest. She has, however, been able to benefit from mama kits, which facilitate safer conditions for childbirth. The razor, soap, basin and sheet included in the kit led to Lillian being admitted into a health center for delivery. Lillian has recently received from GWED-G the supplies to help with her upcoming delivery. As a member of the group she has built up the confidence to talk freely about HIV within the community; she has reached out to and counseled 4 HIV+ mothers and helped them to deal with their diagnosis. Lillian has come a long way in terms of accepting her own diagnosis and is now using her own experience with living positive as an opportunity to improve the lives of other women living with HIV in her community.
Even though Lillian still faces many challenges, she has the support of her husband, the HIV+ mothers` group, and her family. Lillian, together with her husband Justin, grow maize, millet, rice and sweet potato on their farm, but even with the generated income they are unable to pay school fees to send their children to school. In the future she believes that additional seed donations or donations of gardening tools would help them significantly to overcome many of these obstacles.
GWED-G has been working extremely hard to improve the healthcare standards and delivery in communities in Northern Uganda and our partnership remains strong. GlobeMed at Columbia is very grateful for your support and we would like to celebrate the successes we have achieved together. However, we still have a long way to go until the people of Northern Uganda can fully exercise their right to health. We ask for your contribution to and continued support for GlobeMed at Columbia’s project. Feel free to visit our GlobalGiving page, Wordpress, and Facebook pages or follow us on Twitter.
In solidarity,
GlobeMed at Columbia
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