An elderly lady attended the support group recently. Her daughter-in-law had just died (from AIDS related causes) and she had travelled 12 hours on an overnight bus to be there with her grand-daughter. She has a strong love for her granddaughter and has moved from her village to take care of her, and AIDSLink will help with things like school fees.
Paraguay, a small landlocked country in the middle of Latin America has what is considered a low HIV prevalence rate of 0.4%, however, it has a high rate of stigma against people living with HIV, and gender based violence, which increases a woman’s risk of infection, is an everyday occurrence for many.
On December 1st, Jeevanam’s team took students from one of the international schools to visit an orphanage that takes care of children living with HIV and AIDS for World AIDS Day.
Update 22 May 2015
It is amazing to see how quickly Nepal has disappeared from the world’s news headlines. However, the people there, especially in the rural areas, are still suffering fear, hunger, lack of housing and aftershocks.
On World AIDS Day the team hosted an awareness concert in a local park where 600 people gathered throughout the night. Two TV channels were also present filming parts of the concert, which was broadcast on National TV. Myanmar co-workers were interviewed giving the team an opportunity to share the reason for organising the concert; to see both the stigma and fear of HIV be removed. The team hope that the concert was a stepping stone for this to happen.
