Climb For A Cause

Visit with Doctors Without Borders (Anoo)

We spent 2 hours with the Field Coordinators of the Blue House project situated in the Mathare slum of Nairobi. The Blue House project is a comprehensives AIDS care project. It was touching to see the passion and care in Beatrice's voice as she told us how they have managed to lure the slum population to the clinic. They started by having a primary care clinic. In helping treat primary care issues, the clinic would talk patients into testing for AIDS. The sicker they got, the more willing they would be to being tested. This way, the clinic slowly built credibility with the population. Now, it is a fully functional AIDS clinic with 1500 registered patients and 600 patients on ARV treatment. The slum population is 300,000 and about 50% of them are expected to be HIV+ -- so only 1% of them are being treated yet. The road ahead is long, but the big obstacle of establishing credibility has been accomplished. Beatrice and Annie sounded encouraged about what they expect to be able to do and we felt a little more assured. More details later ....

posted by Climb For A Cause @ 9:46 PM