Physical Health Zambia Project #6672

Health Care for 500 HIV+ Children in Zambia

by Power of Love Foundation

Health Care for 500 HIV+ Children in Zambia

Summary

This project provides food, medicines, and a package of life saving health care services to 500 HIV+ children, and training in HIV to families. The package of services includes regular health check-ups, psycho social counseling, education in HIV, training and monitoring in adherence to medication and school support. After a few months, the children stabilize and/or improve in health so that they can attend school. Goal is to keep children healthy and in school for families to be self-reliant.

$60,000
total goal

$24,241
remaining

192
donors

3
monthly donors

7
fundraisers

12
years

Challenge

Over 1 million children have been orphaned in Zambia - most due to AIDS. Since 42% of the population lives in extreme poverty, it is hard for families to care of its orphans. Many orphaned children live with grandmothers/aunts/siblings who have inadequate knowledge about HIV prevention/care, and no source of income. This program equips families with the right tools (via food, meds, education & training), so they can take better care of their HIV+ children/family members and are self-reliant.

Solution

This program provides food, medicines, and a package of life saving health care services to 500 HIV+ children and training in HIV care and prevention to family members. The package includes health checkups, psycho social counseling, education in, training and monitoring in adherence to medication and school support. The high quality continuous care provided leads to an improvement in the children's health so they can attend school. With better knowledge families can prevent HIV/other diseases.

Long-Term Impact

We see an improvement in the health of children measured by weight, malnutrition, viral load, CD4 counts, increase in school attendance, more women going in for voluntary counseling and testing, and better knowledge of HIV prevention and care. With more people tested and on treatment, the result HIV prevention and more children born HIV free. Also, more children graduate high school. The community is stronger and more self-reliant in taking care of its own health.