I just finished my first week in Malawi and I’m really excited about how much I learned in such a short amount of time. I’m based at the Baylor Center for Medical Excellence in Llongwe, Malawi – it is a hospital that specializes in pediatric HIV care and it is affiliated with Baylor School of Medicine in Houston, TX. It is the best HIV caregiver for children in Malawi and ever since 2006 it has been affiliated with GrassRoot Soccer. This is an exciting partnership for GRS because it gives us the opportunity to reach more children and get more testing done by using the established “Baylor” name in Malawi. Everyone around here knows Baylor very well, many because the hospital has saved someone in their community or family, so people are very open to GRS when we say we’re working with Baylor. I’m especially excited to be working with Baylor because it gives me the opportunity to see the medical side of HIV care firsthand. By working and spending time with all of these doctors who are so passionate about pediatric HIV care I think I’ll be able to learn so much more about the whole process.
The Baylor program is also amazing, and exciting for GRS, because it has many innovative ways of thinking of testing and treating HIV patients. For instance, Baylor has initiated this “door to door” testing method that actively goes and seeks out new patients to test for HIV. This has been extremely helpful because many local families do not have the resources to travel to distant locations to test, they also are sometimes scared to be seen at a clinic for stigma reasons or they are just too intimidated by the possible positive result to go out and test. Baylor has found that going door to door around communities has encouraged more and more people to test. The great thing about the door-to-door testing is that Baylor has allocated a certain number of HIV counselors; some are actually GRS coaches as well, to follow up on any patients who have come up with a positive test. This way the patients can be told about the importance of adhering to a regular schedule of ARV’s. I’m really excited to learn about this whole process, and hopefully see how effective it is in person one day.
Last Saturday, I got the opportunity to participate in Baylor’s “Teen Club” program. This is a program that runs every three weeks for children who have already been exposed to the HIV virus. The program gives HIV positive children the opportunity to rally together and spend time in a strong support group. This is important because most of the rest of the community may discriminate against them for being HIV positive. By spending time in this environment the children learn a lot about themselves and actually end up having a lot of fun with their new friends. The program is also supposed to help the children recognize the importance of adherence to their medication (for ARV’s to be successful the adherence rate needs to be over 95%). This is where GRS comes in – our GRS coaches direct many of the activities run during Teen Club. These coaches are recognized role models to the kids in the communities, and therefore when they discuss the importance of taking ARV’s the kids listen up. Watching the coaches work with these children was amazing. The coaches are such an inspiration for the work that they do -- they have absolutely no reason to wake up at 7 am on a Saturday to help with events like Teen Club, yet they come back every week for the sole purpose of helping these children. Because of these coaches, Teen Club runs smoothly and all of the under-appreciated HIV positive children in attendance have the time of their lives doing the GRS activities.
As much fun as the event was, I have to admit that it was also very hard at times. After spending so much time learning about the HIV virus and what happens to HIV positive kids over the course of our training with GRS, it was pretty overwhelming to actually meet an HIV positive kid for the first time. I remember just looking at the first kid I saw and feeling this numbing sense of sadness for him. The chances are the kid did nothing to contract HIV, we learned that 95% of the kids in attendance at Teen Club became HIV positive through their mother at birth or because they were raped as a child – knowing this and then spending time with the kids might have been the hardest part of the whole process. After a while, I realized that there were many reasons to be happy about the whole day. The kids may be suffering and in pain from the ARV’s, but Teen Club gives them the opportunity to spend time with other children with HIV and appreciate the fact that they still have a life to live. One of the worst stigmas with HIV is that your life ends as soon as you contract the virus. Maybe back in the day before the birth of free ARV’s this was true, but nowadays children can live a full life if they adhere to a regular schedule of taking their meds and their bodies stay strong. Ultimately it was impossible to stay sad for too long when you saw how happy the kids were. Pretty much all of them were laughing, talking and joking around – once again proving that they are a million times stronger then I could ever be. Next time I’ll be sure to take some pictures and share them on this blog, it really is a cool day.
This weekend I’m going to Lake Malawi with my two housemates and some other people who I don’t really know yet. Should be a good time, if you have any free time go to Google and type “Lake Malawi” into the images section, pretty impressive.
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