Lane Hartill’s video on the perils of pregnancy in Guinea-Bissau is CRS’ most-viewed on our Youtube channel. It’s both a chilling and poignant look at the hardships pregnant women face in many parts of the world.

CRS helps impoverished Egyptians prevent deadly bird flu by educating women poultry raisers about the disease. It also runs vaccination campaigns. Photo by CRS staff

Until I moved to Cairo, I was never scared of eggs. They were incredible, edible. Plenty of protein in a little white package. What’s not to like?

I am now very, very afraid of eggs. I don’t cook with them much, and when I do, I spend quite a while cleaning their suspect gunky shells with surgical precision-rinsing, gently scrubbing them, soaking them in a water-vinegar solution-all with thick gloves on. Making Duncan Hines brownies from a box (yes, they sell it here) takes a lot longer than it used to.

Egypt is one of the top three countries on the world watch list for avian influenza, a strain of flu that can leap from sick birds to humans if the humans are in close enough contact with poultry. It’s not just a flu that knocks you out with fever and keeps you home from work for a week; it’s deadly. Approximately 60 people have contracted bird flu in Egypt since February 2006, and of those, more than a third died from it. The scenarios that scientists paint of a worldwide epidemic remind me of a Stephen King novel.
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Debbie DeVoe, CRS regional information officer in East Africa, reports on a recent ambulance delivery.

By providing six ambulances to local health partners, the CRS-led AIDSRelief consortium is increasing community access to HIV services. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS.

Six local health partners in Kenya received brand-new ambulances for HIV service delivery from the CRS-led AIDSRelief consortium last week. Funded by the U.S. President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the ambulances will enable the six mission hospitals to transport extremely ill patients and extend service outreach in remote communities.

“We are investing in the people working on the frontiers of the HIV epidemic,” said Hanna Dagnachew, chief of party for AIDSRelief Kenya. “The services we are helping our partners to offer and the success rates they are achieving are worthy of honor in even the most developed countries.”
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Abraham Desta, a Catholic bishop in Meki, Ethiopia visited Milwaukee and talked to editors and reporters of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. His visit resulted in, among other things, an article by Patrick McIlheran on how a little can go a long way in helping people across the globe.

The article quotes Milwaukee Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan, head of CRS’s board, and mentions use of arbor loos, described in Voices in November.

McIlheran wrote: “World Toilet Day wasn’t invented to sell either cards or plumbing. Rather, Nov. 18 was the day on which one was reminded that roughly 2.5 billion people around the world lack what the United Nations calls “improved sanitation” – anything from a pit latrine on up.”

“… As the absurdity of World Toilet Day reminds you, even a few dollars can do good.”

CRS information officer for West Africa, Lane Hartill, attended this weekend the Pan African Christian AIDS Network Conference in Dakar. CRS Senegal helped organize it. He met Africans from across the continent working on HIV and AIDS issues. But one lady from Liberia
stood out. Here’s her story.

Cynthia Gonleh an HIV positive Liberian talks with at-risk young people, lectures Church groups, and is a frequent guest on radio shows in Monrovia. Photo by Lane Hartill/CRS.

I was at the Pan African Christian AIDS Network Conference yesterday. It’s a gathering of people, most of who are affiliated with the Christian Church, interested in fighting HIV and AIDS in Africa.

The day’s sessions rolled out as expected, and lively discussions got going. In one session on orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), a man from South Africa said grandmothers should be included in programs for OVCs because they are often the primary care givers. People nodded in agreement. A woman from Denmark said that orphans need a voice in the decision making process. After all, they know what it’s like to live on the streets, not a bunch of executives in offices. Again, more nods.
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Two CRS caregivers attend the Zambia Caregiver and Volunteer Appreciation Day in Lusaka on Nov. 26. Photo by Paul Macek/CRS.

CRS volunteers were among those honored during Zambia Caregivers Appreciation Day on Nov. 25 which feted some 18,500 people who provide home-based care for HIV and AIDS patients as part of the PEPFAR-funded RAPIDS program.

At the main celebration at a sports complex in the capital Lusaka, CRS country representative Paul Macek introduced caregiver Nora Tabita Chama to the distinguished guests, which included Zambia’s first president, Kenneth Kaunda, and the U.S. Ambassador to Zambia, Donald Booth.
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In remote areas of Cambodia, CRS provides a wide range of support and treatment for people living with HIV. Village Health Volunteer, Chek Tep, (above) brings HIV awareness and medical care to remote areas of northwest Cambodia, where residents have limited access to faraway medical facilities. As part of the program, volunteers are trained by

CRS’ partner agency Action for Health Development in a range of basic health care practices and HIV treatment. Tep is able to travel to remote areas to deliver medicines and information on infectious diseases such as Tuberculosis or TB.

In Cambodia, just below one percent of the population is living with HIV. CRS and its local partners provide a range of services including restoring health and livelihoods and providing care and support to orphans and vulnerable children and their caretakers. Such efforts are the bedrock of community care for people living with HIV in the developing world. Photo by David Snyder for CRS. 

Mayling Simpson-Hebert, a CRS regional technical advisor in East Africa, shares her dream of 100 percent sanitation coverage across the globe.

Happy World Toilet Day! Although it may be hard to believe, almost 40 percent of the world’s population has no access to a toilet. Imagine it: More than one out of every three people living on earth relieves themselves in the open.

Arbor loos are inexpensive toilets that first serve sanitation needs then later provide a rich source of nutrients for fruit trees. In Ethiopia, a family has built a basic privacy fence around the concrete toilet slab of this arbor loo. Photo by CRS Staff.

Simple toilets can make a significant health impact. Many families, though, are either unable to afford proposed latrine designs or simply don’t buy into the benefits. But one model, the “arbor loo,” is making headway. Designed by Peter Morgan in Zimbabwe for the African situation, it is affordable for most rural African households.

Key to the arbor loo’s success is how it serves double duty: first as a basic toilet, then as an extremely fertile pit for a fruit tree. The design provides a wealth of benefits:

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December 1 is World AIDS Day, the day on which we pause to think about the millions of people affected by the HIV pandemic. As the date approaches, we will post a series of entries focusing on our HIV and AIDS programs around the world. Some of the posts will be technical in nature, underscoring the scientific and programmatic foundations of CRS’ work.

When people are diagnosed with HIV, they don’t necessarily begin taking antiretroviral medication immediately. However, they may begin palliative care – medical care or treatments designed to help lessen symptoms or delay progression of the virus. One common treatment is nutritional supplementation – extra food, vitamins, or other supplements that the body needs to remain healthy. In fact, nutritional supplementation is a part of many CRS HIV programs.

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CRS’ West Africa information officer, Lane Hartill, traveled to villages in eastern Sierra Leone last week to see how CRS is helping pregnant women living in isolated areas.”

Hawa is someone you don’t easily forget. When I met her the other day, she’d woke up at sunrise, ate a few wild bush yams, then hiked 5 miles, barefoot, through the rain forest to a health post that CRS had constructed. This wasn’t a stroll through the Boboli Gardens either. In the mountains of eastern Sierra Leone, not far from the Guinea border, you will find rivers of biting red ants that fizz across the ground, nasty thorns as long as your finger, and rocks that like twisting your ankles. All of that is no match for Hawa: she made the trip 8 months pregnant.

Hawa and Bokarie outside their house in Gundama village in Kailahun District in Sierra Leone. Hawa is 8 months pregnant and receives nutrition advice from CRS. Photo by Lane Hartill/CRS

She has that hand-on-her hip, stomach-forward sway that’s part of being 8 months pregnant. But Hawa doesn’t complain. She’s happy to be able to live near a health post and have people like Sylvester Amara, CRS’ health field agent to tell her about the finer points of feeding herself and the baby when it arrives. She loves the nutrition advice; nobody has given her that before. She now knows that she should be eating fruit and fish and peanuts. She knows what protein is. She knows that when the baby comes, she needs to exclusively breast feed for six months. All this is simple stuff. But for a woman like Hawa, who never went to school, hid for months in the forest as the civil war in Sierra Leone flattened her village, and then fled to a refugee camp in Guinea where she lived for 11 years, it’s vital information.

Sierra Leone has the highest child mortality rate in the world. The statistics—270 child deaths per 100,000 children born—are cold and obtuse to most people. But when Hawa tells you she’s given birth nine times, and seven children have died including her 5 year-old daughter, Iye, the one she put on her back and ran into the jungle with as the war arrived, the numbers turn into Hawa’s toddlers.

And Hawa, the woman sitting in front of you with the sweet smile and kind eyes, becomes someone who has run the gauntlet of giving birth in one of the most risky country’s in the world if you’re pregnant. All nine times she gave birth in the village. Not this time. She will be in the government clinic, she says. She’s going to go early, a week early if necessary. And her child is going to survive this time. She just knows it will.