Painting by CRS beneficiary Tich, from Zimbabwe. Photo by Jim Stipe/CRS

After wrapping up Catholic Relief Services’ Continuum of Care Forum in Washington D.C. yesterday, most participants are headed to their homes all over the world. Three of the attendees have a little more work to do, though. At the forum, the audience heard from three people who have benefitted from life-saving HIV treatment and support services, and CRS wants our supporters to hear their inspiring stories, too. Today Christine, Danny, both from Zambia, and Tich of Zimbabwe are working with the CRS video team to record special messages for you.

Tich (pronounced “Teach”) has a wisdom beyond his 19 years. Then again, he had to grow up fast. Tich began getting sick at the age of 11, at first diagnosed with meningitis, then with tuberculosis. He remembers going to a clinic to receive different tests, and the doctor asked to speak with his mother alone. After that, he began taking medicine, but his mother never told him why. When he learned that his medicines were commonly used for HIV, he went to a clinic alone to be tested. He did not let the positive result discourage him. Tich has chosen to channel his talents into helping other young people living with HIV.

“I tell them, ‘Yes, we have HIV, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a future, that doesn’t mean we can’t go somewhere else and make good decisions in our lives.’ “

One way of expressing his feelings is through painting and drawing, a skill he lends to his work with children and young people. ”I help them create their own books about their lives, and they write everything and do all of the illustrations. It is good for them to process their feelings in this way.”

Tich brought several pieces of artwork to share in his message to you, the supporters who make possible the programs that changed his future. One, he said, particularly illustrates his life. It shows a man breaking free of chains that have bound him. Be on the lookout for the final video around Thanksgiving.

Christine Katyeka traveled from Zambia to Washington, D.C., to share her story of leading a healthy life with HIV. Today, she’ll tell her story at the Catholic Relief Services’ HIV Forum, held in the nation’s capitol. It’s fitting that she will speak in a city where funding of a bill called PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) gave her access to life-saving medicine.

Christine is bright, energetic, and full of inner strength. She had to rely on those qualities when her first husband wanted to take on a second wife.

“I thought to myself, ‘I am too smart to live in polygamy.’ “

It took strength to move back to her parents’ home, and to gather the courage to get an HIV test when she failed to recover from repeat infections. After she received a positive diagnosis, her father discouraged her from beginning anti-retroviral therapy.

“He said I would die if I started taking strong medicine. I had to find courage within myself to start treatment.”

She found a source to nurture that courage in a HIV support group where she met her husband, Danny.  They are the proud parents of a healthy toddler girl who does not have HIV.  And eventually, Christine’s father was won over by the profound improvement in his daughter’s health.

“Now he tells everyone to get tested, to get in treatment. He says ‘Look at my Christine!’  And they go.”

CRS’ HIV Continuum of Care Forum is underway in Washington, D.C., and experts from around the world are gathered to share best practices for providing services to people living with HIV. Although many of the discussions will be technical, the conference also highlights stories from people like Christine, individuals whose lives have been changed by quality HIV treatment and support services.

Ambassador Eric Goosby, the United States Global AIDS coordinator, is among the speakers at a two-day forum in Washington D.C. on September 15 and 16, Participants at the forum will examine the care of HIV and AIDS patients around the world.

Michele Jina (right) dispenses anti-retroviral drugs at the main pharmacy at Hospital Esperance, located in northern Haiti. The hospital is supported by the AIDSRelief consortium, led by CRS. Photo by Rick D’Elia for CRS

The forum, sponsored by Catholic Relief Services, will feature presentations from practitioners and researchers from countries in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, as well as CRS headquarters in Baltimore. They will showcase innovative and promising practices from CRS care and treatment programs.

Focusing on the continuum of care, our experts will deliver presentations on how to treat HIV and AIDS patients over the long term, addressing a variety of needs of those of all ages in all stages—from pediatric to palliative care.

Dignity and quality of life are at the heart of CRS’ HIV and AIDS programming. CRS supports more than 280 HIV and AIDS projects in the poorest and most vulnerable regions of the developing world. In 2009, CRS will help nearly 24 million people affected by the pandemic—more than 8 million directly and nearly 16 million indirectly.

The forum will feature four beneficiaries of CRS’ work in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Uganda. CRS President Ken Hackett will be among those addressing the gathering, which will be held at the Academy for Educational Development Conference Center, 1825 Connecticut Ave., in Washington, D.C.

To register, visit http://continuumofcareforum.eventbrite.com/.

A group of students from Austin, TX, recently visited CRS’ HIV and AIDS program in India. Liza Manjarrez, a campus minister who accompanied them, reflects on the trip:

For over a year, I had been planning an international immersion trip to India. The trip, for students, would focus on building community, doing justice, living simply, and engaging spiritually.
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The four Jackson children lost their parents, likely to AIDS, six years ago. Evelin, at left, has cared for her two sisters and 9-year-old brother since she was 18. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS

Until I moved to Africa, I had no understanding of how HIV is destroying families. Now I see the damage on just about every visit I make to the field.

Last week in Tanzania, I met multiple families with children who had lost one or both parents to AIDS. These children are left to face issues I can barely imagine confronting as an adult:

- Deep grief over the loss of one or both parents
- Appreciation for relatives who take them in but also guilt and possible abuse for increasing their caregivers’ hardship
- Hunger, likely every day, as caregivers simply can’t earn enough to feed the larger household
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Lane Hartill, CRS regional information officer for West Africa, sends this report from Cameroon.

There’s a frank conversation going on in a mud house in eastern Cameroon.

A handful of orphans live here, and they are raising themselves. There is an older sister who’s 21, but she’s rarely home and, from what I can gather, isn’t much of a mother. She comes home only at night and brings along a man. He’s new, says her 16 year-old sister, Edwige. She’s been seeing him since her first husband died.
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CRS Regional Information Officer Lane Hartill was in southern Senegal and Gambia last week,interviewing people who are HIV positive. He sent in this post.

Babinette wants to talk about her love life. There’s this guy, you see. I’ll call him Abdul. And he’s interested in her. Very interested. He’s ready to pop the question.
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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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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. 

Mike Hill, CRS’ communications officer for sub-Saharan Africa (based at our World Headquarters in Baltimore), writes from Zambia, where he is visiting CRS projects:

St. Joseph’s Hospice in Lusaka does something such institutions rarely do in the United States—it discharges patients.

The hospice offers a service common in America but rare in Africa: palliative care for those approaching death, including psychological and spiritual counseling as well as pain relief, though the most effective drug, morphine, is very hard to come by in this country.

The hospice, open only a few months in a brand new building, has its operation expenses paid by CRS. Other aid organizations have joined forces to get the hospice up and running, but its hospital beds are still enroute from Australia, so it is making do with the 11 beds it scrounged up. When fully operational, it will have room for 33.

Adminstrator Christina Phiri says that since opening in April, six of its clients have died. But eight have been sent back home in relative health. That’s because they arrived in what appeared to be the last stages of AIDS, but at the hospice were put on antiretroviral therapy (ART) for the first time. It got their disease under control.

This is just one more example of how ART, the so-called AIDS drug cocktail, is bringing hope and health to the many on this continent who were condemned to certain death only a few years ago.