If I kept it to myself - World YWCA

If I kept it to myself
of Health to train volunteer home based care
givers. I was 20 years old at the time, too young
to be accepted into the training programme as
a care giver. But I was eager to be involved and
consequently was assigned to administration and
public relations for the training programme. Since
late 1999, I have been co-ordinating the home
based care programmes in Bergville. We have 72
caregivers in a community of 140,000 inhabitants.
Our target groups are orphans, youth, widows and
HIV positive people. I mobilise and co-ordinate
NGOs and representatives from local government
departments to form an intersectoral team for
AIDS Action that meets every two months.
I work with community leaders by mentoring
and valuing HBC home based caregivers,
fundraising with church leaders and farmers, and
have an audience with political leadership. Our
government does not worry about continuum
of care outside health facilities, which is why
caregivers are not recognised for their work.
Yet they are very important women who help
our society to care for the sick and orphaned.
This is why in 2004 I addressed our Premier, Mr.
Sbusiso Ndebele, asking him to recognise the
hard work and dedication of volunteer caregivers
in our communities.
When someone has AIDS, the family usually
has no idea how to cope. Because of the nature
of the illness, the patient will suddenly develop
new opportunistic infections that can frighten the
family. The carers show the family how to deal
with these new symptoms in the best possible
way. As a result, clients and their families are
able to confide their fears and challenges to
carers, and that is often more important than
the little medical help we have to offer. Our
responsibility is also to help the clinic come to
the patient, when our clients are desperate for
help. Because the community doctors are in the
clinics most of the time, they seldom get to the
people in the rural areas who are too ill to walk
the distance.
52
Since September 2004, in association with the
caregivers and Dr. Moll from the Tugela Ferry
Church of Scotland Hospital at Umsinga, we
introduced an anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment
programme, involving over 30 patients. The
Bergville-Okhahlamba Hospital, which is
closest has no ARV treatment facilities but
through the relationship developed with the
hospital at Umsinga, 300 km away, many
people are now receiving treatment. The
treatment is free but they have to pay for
transport and food while they are at the
hospital. We don’t have a vehicle to transport
them so they hire private vehicles.
When we began providing treatment to our
clients the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) did
training with us. This helped us to understand the
issues of treatment and we incorporated these
into our HBC work.
The whole issue of disability grants provided by
the government is a difficult one. Most people
desperately need the money because they
are starving but are too ill to go to government
departments to fetch their money. They also only
qualify for a disability grant when their immune
system CD4 count is so low that they can barely
walk. I try to use my office telephone as much
as possible to sort out these problems, but the
system is not quick. Many people die before they
are paid their due.
We facilitated the distribution of 38 tons of maize
donated by farmers in the area. The HBC givers`
team identified the most needy households,
particularly those caring for children affected by
AIDS, and with no income or financial assistance
through social grants. The farmers also pay for
school fees and buy clothing for those children
who are not receiving government grants. The
government gives monthly grants for foster
care, child care and care dependency children.
I have helped one of our clients to secure the