saving little pieces of world

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to harbor 64% of the world’s HIV infections and that number is growing 12 times faster than anywhere else on the globe. Uganda’s rural youth are becoming an increasingly high-risk demographic with over 80% of new infections attributed to unsafe sex. At this moment 7% of Uganda’s adult population is living with HIV/AIDS and that percent is on the rise…

This information probably isn’t very surprising, probably didn’t even make you blink. These are the sort of statistics that ooze out of journalists in high rises and news broadcasters backdropped by flat screen images of desolate villages teeming with gaunt children. This is the kind of news we file in our brains with the new Iraqi casualty count and North Korean refugee figures…we’ve heard it all before.
And yet our subconscious apathy… or helplessness or disinterest or confusion towards the matter doesn’t change the should-be-shocking reality that our globe’s poorest nations are being ate bone dry by this pandemic. In India, the Caribbean and Africa the tributaries of this infection are slowly but surely working and winding themselves into every community… flooding entire families, entire villages, and soon entire islands, countries and continents. No, this isn’t the bubonic plague; it isn’t a thief that comes in the night and ravages a populace. But considering HIV/AIDS has been on the forefront of confounded medicine for nearly thirty years and the western nations have been watching their numbers drop for ages now, there is obviously an identifiable disconnect between developing countries and developed countries with regards to this issue (among countless others). I don’t want to ramble on about that, but this is clearly different than not being able to fight corruption or develop industry…and it isn’t necessarily a shortage of money (the U.S., France, UK, Scotland, Canada…etc. all donate billions of dollars to the ‘fight against AIDS’ in SSA) as much as it is a misstep in distribution of funds *surprise surprise*. Musevini, or M7 as he’s known here, basically blew his whole foreign aid wad on one campaign: the ABCD’s- Abstinence. Be Faithful. Condoms. Or Die!! Clever marketing I think. Blech. Anyways, the bottom line is that despite how tired of an issue HIV/AIDS may seem over yonder, its so evident here you can touch it, it looms over homes and children like rain clouds.
A virus is a small infectious organism that needs a living host cell in order to reproduce. The virus often attaches to a specific type of cell, releasing its own RNA or DNA coding information in to the cells decoding machinery. The virus hijacks the host cell’s equipment so that components of the virus are manufactured and reproduced with in the host cell’s machinery and subsequently released into the host where the cycle restarts.
Normally, when a virus enters the body, your immune system (white blood cells) is able to attack and destroy any infected cells. Immunity from viruses can only be achieved by receiving a vaccine. Babies receive vaccines for polio, measles, rubella and other awful difficult to combat viruses. However once contracted, there is no cure for a virus, bits of it will always be lurking somewhere in your system like a drug addict waiting to score.
HIV is a virus (hence the V). It’s a smart virus. A very very smart virus. It has evolved or adapted or come to be by happenstance in such a way that the specific host cell it feeds off of and destroys is the very cell your body needs to combat it…see the problem? The CD4 lymphocytes, or helper T-Lymphocytes are the Godfather’s of your immune system. When something infiltrates your body (a bacterial, fungal or viral infection), it’s their job to call their friends, cousins and other mobster white blood cell cohorts and coordinate the subsequent destruction of said infiltrators. When HIV enters the picture it handicaps that mode of communication, activation and coordination. Everyone starts to panic, doesn’t know where to go, who to kill…Montague vs. Montague, Capulet vs. Capulet…the immune system begins to commit suicide.
Meanwhile the host is chillin. Maybe a fever here, a headache there…nothing a joint and a Simpsons re-run couldn’t quell. If the host isn’t looking for them, it can take years for your CD4 counts to drop low enough to recognize abnormal symptoms…you can see the issue with sexual transmission; if you don’t know your HIV+ you probably don’t think your HIV+ so your pledge that your “clean” to your partner isn’t necessarily a lie as much as a fatal error.
Ultimately, despite the best efforts of ART (antiretroviral therapy- which aims to abolish viral RNA reproduction), your body is no longer able to defend itself. AIDS is categorized by the development of rare infections and cancers: thrush (yeast infection in mouth, vagina or esophagus), pneumonia, tuberculosis or Kaposi’s sarcoma (red/purple raised patches on the skin); though there are many more. 95-100% of HIV infected people will develop AIDS at some point, though it may take more than 10 years.
Last week my supervisor wanted to demonstrate how our HIV test kits in the clinic work. He carelessly grabbed a blood sample from the dozens of test tubes perched on the counter and dropped a blot on a tiny receptor strip. Ten minutes later we went to check it out and it had read positive. The random lab sample, the older women in the hall who’d complained of dizziness was living unknowingly with HIV. We couldn’t inform her I was told, as its illegal to test for HIV without consent. So I sat and stared at the test for a few minutes until the doctor came and threw it in the rubbish bin. I bid the woman a safe journey and refilled my water bottle. Those are things I don’t know what to do with.


So. I’m here for 3 months (1 of which is gone with the wind). I’m not going to eliminate AIDS from rural Ugandan communities. But I’d like to think I could take a stab at educating, informing and testing my district, my community; with the hopes and idealistic longing that my efforts will propagate themselves elsewhere in the country. With the money I raised at home, the money that was donated so generously to this project by my dear friends, family and even distant acquaintances; I’ll be implementing a pilot project for Soft Power Health.
The project is called S.H.A.R.E.
Sharing HIV Awareness through Resources and Education (I think it’s a title rule of acronyms that you don’t use the acronym in the full name, but alas). It’s a three part project, whose wheels and wings are already rolling and flapping with the wind at our back…wind being generated by a people who know the situation, know what they need and are willing to work to get it.
I’ve been coordinating with 4 rural secondary schools in the Butugaya and Budondo sub-counties of Jinja District. My goal is to make HIV education, resources, testing and post-test counseling readily available to those who need it most at no cost. Those who need it most in Uganda are the youth (15-24) living in rural areas… so highschools in the bush it was! Here’s a basic breakdown.

Part 1: A teacher’s information and education seminar conducted by Soft Power Health (i.e. me) aiming to educate and train teachers from each of the four selected secondary schools about the HIV virus, transmission, treatment and prevention; as well as equip them with the skills and framework to initiate an HIV based curriculum in their schools. The program will serve as a great opportunity to build the resource capacity of the schools, clear up any HIV/AIDS misconceptions and equip the teachers with the knowledge to be an on-campus HIV education resource for their students.
The free teacher training and education session will be at
6:30 pm on Monday, October 22, 2007
At the Cool Breeze Hotel in Jinja

Part 2: Soft Power Health and the AIDS Information Centre will facilitate an on-campus HIV prevention program at each school. The program features an education and information seminar, followed by free on-site voluntary testing and post-test counseling for teachers, students and the local communities. Soft Power Health will be partnering with the AIDS Information Centre in order to offer the highest quality services. We hope the program will help the students and their communities gain a better understanding of HIV and the risks associated with its contraction and transmission, as well as provide a free testing service to the community in the hopes of stopping the spread of HIV. This program will occur at each school on a day that works for AIC, SPH and the school; we prefer to conduct the program between November 12th and November 30th.

Part 3: The creation of a savings account that will generate funds in order to pay for 2 Soft Power Health staff members to become HIV post-test counselor certified. I had originally intended to pay for and have the trainings completed by the time I leave, but I’ve learned it’s a much more involved and expensive process that Id thought and so ill just be setting the wheels in motion. Once SPH has their own post-test counselors, we wont need to rely on AIC to provide their own staff to carry out the testing and counseling… it’s a way to make SHARE a SPH dominated project so that they can be more self reliant.

So that’s it. The calling I’ve been waiting for. I visited Lubani SS and Trinity College this morning and met with the entire staff of both. I was showered with cups of tea and mandaze (African doughnuts). Everyone I’ve worked with thus far has been so responsive and I’ve been more efficient here than ever at home, despite the stigmas attached to getting things done in the ‘third world’. I was fortunate enough to wander into the AIDS Information Centre in Jinja (the JFK of Ugandan AIDS work) in my first week of work just to ask a few questions. I ended up in the manager’s office, describing my project and having him offer to provide all of the testing equipment for the program. Nearly $6,000 worth of HIV kits, needles, test tubes, gloves, tourniquets etc. So I’m just trekkin along. I’m really enjoying it thus far. I anticipate huge pitfalls, but as the program director of FSD handed over 1.2 million shillings for SHARE this afternoon I was flying pretty damn high. Ill be creating posters, pamphlets and other various text-y things in the next week and then we’ll just hold our breath and jump I guess. Its pretty exciting to find yet another thing that makes my tick though. I always was one to tick.