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This photo was taken during a visit to a Malawi village that we assist with orphan care. You can tell by the clothes people wear that our visit was an important event. The child in the wheelchair symbolizes some of the health needs found in rural areas, far from major health facilities. Eighty-six percent of Malawi’s people live in rural villages, and we have yet to find a village with electrical power. Fewer than half of rural people have safe water, and HIV is widespread, limiting the body’s ability to fight off otherwise non-threatening infections. Villagers walk long distances to reach services elsewhere, with the sick being conveyed to treatment centers on bicycles or bicycle ambulances, though this is difficult during the November through April rainy season when dirt roads turn to mud. We have long hoped to obtain four-wheel drive mobile clinics enabling the delivery of health services to remote areas. Our hopes were realized when The Elizabeth Taylor HIV/AIDS Foundation recently enabled the purchase, staffing, and equipping of two such clinics for deployment in southern Malawi, the region hit hardest by HIV and famine.
Each vehicle will convey a clinical officer, nurse, nurse’s aid, and driver to selected villages. The deployment of the vehicles and coordination with back-up laboratory and clinical services will carefully be worked out with government health officers. This is a major addition to our on-the-ground services in support of the people of rural Malawi, and I hope all of you will feel the gratitude that we do to The Elizabeth Taylor HIV/AIDS Foundation and to Dame Elizabeth Taylor personally for her humane and humanitarian commitments. William Rankin Email GAIA info@thegaia.org • Tel 415-461-7196 • Visit our website: http://www.thegaia.org |
Since very early in the epidemic, Dame Elizabeth Taylor has been a stalwart advocate for people infected or affected by HIV, and we are tremendously grateful for her wonderful generosity. |