Some food for thought on Thanksgiving Day

Hey everyone,

I hope Thanksgiving Day finds everyone well and that you all manage to spend a little time with the people you love. I sure wish that I could have the three F's in my life right about now -- family, friends and football. But I'm happy to settle for some nsima, which is what I eat every day, and my new Grassroot Soccer family.

I just wanted to write a quick entry to share some of the latest research in the world of HIV/AIDS. All the information is coming from the Kaiser Family Foundation, one of the leading researchers of HIV/AIDS and other global health problems in the world. KFF is an American non-profit that does a lot of good work all over the world and I love reading all of their most recent updates.

Here are two links to the latest stats and figures for the global HIV epidemic. The first link is a general stat sheet that covers HIV all over the world while the second link focuses exclusively on Africa's relationship with the HIV/AIDS virus.

1. World

http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/3030-14.pdf

2. Africa

http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/7391-08.pdf

In case you don't have time to look through the two links I'll share some of the facts that I find the most interesting.

A) 67% of people living with HIV/AIDS live in Africa (that's 22.4 million people). 70% of new HIV/AIDS infections take place in Africa, and 70% of all HIV/AIDS related deaths occur in Africa. There are mind blowing percentages when you consider that there are currently 33.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS and Africa only accounts for 12% of the world's population.

B) The Adult HIV/AIDS prevelance rate in Sub-Saharan Africa is 5.2%.

Sorry to give you guys such a sombre Thanksgiving post but I think it's important to think about things that this while your giving thanks for whatever your giving thanks for.

Before I sign off, I will finish with a really important quote from the KFF:

"The latest country estimates from UNAIDS and WHO indicate that in most sub-Saharan African countries, HIV/AIDS prevalence has stabilized, although often at high levels. In addition, some countries have even begun to experience declines. Finally, there is evidence of reduced risk behavior in some parts of the region. Most countries in sub-Saharan

Africa have developed national responses to HIV/AIDS through National AIDS Commissions, legislation, programs, and services"

There is hope after all!

Happy Thanksgiving!

315 people tested at our 3rd and final testing event!

Sorry for the delay in between posts, November has been a busy month for GRS in Malawi. Things are finally starting to settle down now that you lucky people in the States are getting ready to chow down on some Turkey.

Rachel and I hosted our third and final half-day VCT testing tournament this past Saturday in the Kawale district of Lilongwe and the event was a huge success. The final numbers on the day were as follows – 315 people tested, 9 people were found to be reactive and of those 9 only 2 of them were over the age of 18. I have a couple of notes about the day as a whole:

· The number 315 is absolutely phenomenal. In our previous two events we managed to test 120 people and 220 people respectively so to beat our previous high by almost 100 is a great achievement. The fact that we’re improving on our numbers by right around 100 people from one event to the other is making the GRS Malawi team recognize the limitless potential of these half-day events. With continued improvement we’re hoping that one day we can try to test 500 or even 1000 people at these half-day events.

· The final budget for the day ended up being around 270 dollars. With the help of Baylor Hospital here in Lilongwe we’ve managed to cut pretty much every single unnecessary expense so that we can focus our money on things that will make us more efficient. The fact that we’re testing over one person per dollar that we’re spending is a pretty cool stat; especially when you consider that the standard budgets for testing events in Southern Africa can go as high as two or three thousand bucks while testing right around the same number as us.

· The thing that amazed me most about the event was how smooth and hassle free it was. At the previous two events we had major problems that came out of nowhere at the last second, for example in Area 25 one of the teams didn’t show up and in Area 36 four of the teams showed up two hours late. We had a few unexpected hiccups at Kawale but for the most part we dealt with them quickly and didn’t let them disturb our rhythm at all. We avoided one major catastrophe when Mother Nature decided to be kind and hold off on the rain until the end of our event. At one point it started to drizzle a little bit and I totally froze. I knew that if it started pouring everything would have been ruined – the kids would have run home, the PA system guys would have packed up shop and the counselors would have gone home as well. I can’t even begin to imagine how terrible it would have been if it had started raining. For one thing, we probably wouldn’t have tested 50 people and all of the 270 bucks that we spent would have gone to waste.

· One of the toughest parts of the day was when this 18-year-old kid came up to me and told me that he had just tested positive for HIV/AIDS. I tried to support him as much as possible and raise his spirits but the worst part was that he didn’t believe the outcome of the test. He kept saying that he didn’t believe the doctors but when I asked him why he couldn’t come up with one good reason not to believe them. I tried my hardest to tell him that he had to visit the Baylor clinic in the next week to follow up the positive result and consult with one of the clinicians at the hospital but he seemed very hesitant and almost hostile. After a while we managed to calm him down and we booked him in for an appointment this week but for a little while that was kind of a scary moment. I think his reaction to the positive result was a product of two things: 1) I think he was scared and part of the HIV/AIDS culture here is to run away from things that scare you. 2) I also think that this was a classic case of HIV/AIDS stigma. The kid didn’t want to believe that the positive test was real because he didn’t want to accept that HIV/AIDS was a real problem. Either way, as long as he goes to his appointment and sticks to his ARV’s he’ll be ok but we definitely need to keep an eye on him.

· I don’t want to finish on such a somber note so just before I conclude my post I’m going to talk about one of the coolest things about the Kawale event -- the presence of the local community Chiefs. In Kawale, and actually in a lot of Malawian communities, the Chiefs are the most influential people in the area. We extended invitations to all 12 Chiefs in the Kawale area and we were all extremely surprised to see all 12 of them show up on the day of the event. These Chiefs were undoubtedly one of the main reasons we managed to boost our number to 315. Their presence inspired kids, mothers, fathers, and absolutely everyone around to come out to our event and test. The best part of the whole Chief experience is that some of them actually agreed to test. We were by no means expecting them to agree to test and we were ok with that, we thought their participation would be enough of a help to our event. In fact, some of them almost declined our invitations because they were worried that we would force them to test. But in the end, after they saw what we were doing for the kids and how fun everything was some of them actually agreed to go into the testing room. The fact that they not only showed up to the event but actually participated in the testing aspect was a huge help to GRS in Malawi and a testament to their wisdom as Chiefs. Hopefully we can continue to build a working relationship with them because their power is unparalleled in Malawian culture.

All in all the day was a huge success and I’m really happy because it means that I can start my 3-week journey home on a high note. Starting on Friday Rachel and I are planning a nice long trip from Lilongwe to Cape Town through Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia. We’re planning a couple of fun activities along the way – some of these fun activities include bungee jumping from Victoria Falls, sand dune surfing in Namibia, visiting a sweet safari park in Botswana and white water rafting down the Zambezi. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes if I survive and I’ll take as many pictures as possible.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you wherever you are in the world!

Great coverage of GRS Malawi in the Press

Hey Guys,

Just wanted to write a quick update with two important things.

1) In the last week, all of the major Malawian media organizations have been sending requests to interview Grassroot Soccer about the record breaking number of HIV tests at the two events that we hosted in Area 36 and Area 25 last week. The two biggest newspapers in the country have covered the events and all sorts of important people have been congratulating us on our huge numbers. Apparently the 615 people that we tested last Sunday is a record number of tests in one day in the history of HIV/AIDS in Malawi -- pretty awesome news.

One of my jobs in the past week was to write an article/press release to detail the success of our events. The Grassroot Soccer website posted it on the main website today, so I'll include the link if you want to check it out (if I were you I would check it out, not to read the article but to look at the picture from the event). Here is the link to the article on the GRS site:

http://www.grassrootsoccer.org/2009/11/03/arecordnumberofhivtestsinmalawi/

And if you don't want to look at the link, I'll copy and paste the article from the site here:

GRS Malawi saw unprecedented success during the weekend of October 23-25, 2009, through two community HIV testing events in Lilongwe. On the 23rd of October, through a half-day Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) tournament combining soccer, GRS activities, and HIV testing, GRS Malawi tested 215 people. Two days later, the GRS team, in partnership with the Baylor College of Medicine/Abbott Fund Centre of Excellence, tested another 610 people during an impressive community sensitization event with over 4,000 people in attendance. Testing a total of 825 Malawians in one weekend, GRS Malawi is making great strides to fight the pervasive stigma and fear that deter people from learning their status. David Jones, Vice President of the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative, stated, “there has not been a larger single HIV sensitization event organized in the country ever, or more people tested at a public event in one day.”

The following is a first hand account of the weekend written by Eren Munir, a Grassroot Soccer intern in Malawi:

After weeks of preparations, the weekend set to begin at noon on Friday, October 23rd, with a half-day VCT, and end at 4 pm on Sunday, October 25th, with a community-wide sensitization event, was finally here. Charged with the ambitious task of completing two separate testing events in two distinctly different areas of Lilongwe, Malawi in just 52 hours, we were unsure what a realistic goal for the events would be, but decided that testing 300 people, between the two, was reasonable.

Having tested 115 people at a similar half-day VCT tournament three weeks earlier, we hoped to test 100 people during Friday’s tournament. By incorporating soccer and HIV education into a positive environment around testing, however, we were able to provide counseling and testing services for 215 people, surpassing our goal while spending only $235 for the entire event! The cost-effectiveness of our model, which capitalizes on the power of soccer to encourage people to test, is inspiring. With one success behind us, we prepared for Sunday’s sensitization event, unsure of what to expect from an event we had never run before.

The sensitization event was even less predictable, and with church attendance a common Sunday activity in Lilongwe, we wondered if we would be able to draw a significant crowd. On our side, however, was the presence of Mafunyeta, one of Malawi’s most popular musicians. Early in the afternoon, with over a thousand people in the audience, we anticipated testing 200 people. But as the golden Malawian sun beat relentlessly on our backs, and the day wore on, suddenly, people began streaming in by the hundreds. Soon, the crowd had tripled, and over 4000 people gathered for the music, performances, and HIV education presented by GRS and Baylor’s Tingathe and PMTCT Outreach Programs. The sea of people before us was a powerful sight and at the end of the day, the news that 610 people had tested during the event was overwhelming. Bringing the total number of people tested to almost three times our initial predictions, the GRS team felt proud of and inspired by the community’s collective action in the face of an epidemic that claims the lives of more than 60,000 Malawians every year.

2) The second piece of news is that we’ve had to push back our next VCT event by 2 weeks. We were supposed to have our third and final VCT event in the Kawale district of Lilongwe this Friday (the 6^th) but because of a massive overhaul in the academic schedule, our plans have been completely changed.

Basically, the Malawian Government decided yesterday to completely switch the academic calendar by moving the Christmas holiday for each government school and by shortening the vacation time by 4 weeks. Can you imagine how upset you would be if you were a student and your vacation time was completely ruined???

The new academic calendar certainly makes things a little more difficult for us but we’re still going to try to have our even in Kawale before the break starts at the end of November. I’ll keep you updated as I know more.