GAIA | Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance

Overview

Empowering Communities
  - GAIA Villages
  - Home-Based Care
  - Youth HIV-Prevention
  - Orphan Care
  - Orphan Education
  - Preventing Malaria

Raising the Status of Women
- Nursing Scholarship Fund
- Micro-Finance

Building Healthcare Capacity
- Hospital-Based Services
Mobile Medical Clinics

GAIA's Impact

From the Field
  - Ellen's Diary
  - Stories
  - Monthly Updates
  - Printed Newsletters
  - Audio/Video

Your donation to Mobile Health Clinics can save lives:

$3,600 Driver's annual salary
$5,000 One-year's supply of HIV test kits
$11,000 Clinical officer's annual salary
$27,000 Diagnostic and treatment supplies

With more than 84% of Malawi's population living in remote rural villages, villagers who are sick must walk many kilometers to access healthcare. The distance has grave consequences on women and children's health. Pregnant women cannot easily access prenatal care, and the difficulty of transporting sick children to distant hospitals and clinics contributes to high child and maternal mortality rates. Many villagers are infected with HIV yet remain untested and untreated, thereby increasing new infections and mother-to-child transmission of the disease.

To provide integrated healthcare services including same-day HIV testing, prenatal care, diagnosing and treating malaria, and testing for and treating tuberculosis, GAIA launched its Mobile Health Clinic program in 2008 with the generous support of the Elizabeth Taylor HIV/AIDS Foundation.

The GAIA Elizabeth Taylor Mobile Health Clinics are deployed in Mulanje, a remote and underserved region of the country long ignored by international NGOs and the underserved by the government. Mulanje borders Mozambique and the resulting cross-border traffic and commerce fuels HIV by encouraging commercial sex between truck drivers and desperately poor local women and girls. An acute shortage of district health personnel as well as medications and supplies means that many people living in this region cannot obtain basic healthcare.

In 2008, GAIA purchased two four-wheel drive vehicles capable of reaching remote villages, and in 2010 we added a third vehicle. Each vehicle contains an examination couch, supplies and storage for medical and laboratory supplies.

Read International Program Director, Ellen Schell's report from her visit to the mobile clinics.

Click here to read

Clinics are staffed by a Clinical Officer (similar to a Physician's Assistant in the US), a registered nurse, nurse's aide, and a driver. On average, the GAIA Elizabeth Taylor Mobile Health Clinics see 100 patients per day. In addition to providing HIV testing (including testing of pregnant women for initiation of treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission during pregnancy), the Mobile Clinic's Staff treat a variety of other life-threatening illnesses including malaria and tuberculosis, and also provide growth monitoring, family-planning services and prenatal care.

The villagers' test results speak to the importance of this life-saving program. In 2010, 18.4 % of those tested were HIV positive. 15% of pregnant women tested were found positive and all were referred to health centers for further care. This testing raises self-awareness about HIV and aims to reduce transmission, especially from mother to child.