CARE helps Zambia fight HIV and AIDS

Flora Hibeene, from the Victoria Falls compound just outside Livingstone, is a home-based care volunteer for CARE International who visits people living with HIV and AIDS and offers them support. She says: “I’ve been a caregiver since the programme began – I have five clients who I visit at least once a week. It is challenging but it is a valuable service for the people we visit and their families.”

Across Zambia, hundreds of thousands of people are now chronically ill as a result of HIV and AIDS. They are often suffering great pain and the burden on already-stretched families can be tremendous. CARE is running several projects under the umbrella of a £10 million programme funded by the UK Government’s Department for International Development aimed at tackling the wide-ranging impact of HIV and AIDS. Part of this is a programme of home-based care in seven districts across Zambia, training and equipping volunteers to offer practical and emotional support to chronically ill people and their families.

At full capacity, it will have 4,000 volunteers, like Flora, offering support to some 15,000 chronically sick patients. After their training, each care-giver is provided with kits containing useful items like cotton wool, bandages and paracetemol, and then they carry out regular home visits to their patients.

Children who have lost one or both of their parents to the illness, and families caring for orphans, are among the most vulnerable in society. CARE’s SCOPE-OVC programme (Strengthening Community Partnerships for the Empowerment of Orphans and Vulnerable Children) works through community schools to help orphans and vulnerable children deal with the loss and grief they are experiencing by training teachers and guardians in what is known as psycho-social support.

Sometimes this can be as basic as encouraging children to play. Often, it is helping those around them understand how children behave when they are grieving. SCOPE-OVC also provides teacher training, school materials and repairs to school buildings to try to give orphans and vulnerable children the chance of the best possible education and all the opportunities that brings with it.

As well as providing practical assistance like this, CARE is also supporting a network of community organisations - the Treatment Advocacy and Literacy Campaign – representing people living with HIV and AIDS to try to influence the Government policies that affect them.

And in November 2005, CARE helped to organize the first ever national conference in Zambia bringing together public and private organizations, Government departments, community groups, Zambian citizens and international organizations to discuss how to help people live longer and more healthily with the illness.