Last year, we mobilized resources for the Zimbabwe Cholera outbreak and I want to thank all of you who responded to our urgent appeal to meet the cholera relief efforts. The fight against cholera is still continuing, but I want to draw your attention to an area which one of the members of this blog reminded me of. Below are extracts from the comments that she posted.
Pastor Tom
I am on ARV’s and I’m finding it hard to get them and the pharmacy’s are charging in Zimbabwe dollars (maximum daily withdrawal was five hundred million at the time, which was less than one US dollar)and how do we reform that part of the sector. I can’t even go to the doctor's for a regular check-up coz it’s charged in US dollars. A supply of Stalenev for a month is round about 3 billion Zimbabwe dollars but I guess it’s more…
… The seminar training you had on cholera, can the same be done for HIV/AIDS there is a lot of people who don’t know about the side effects of the drugs. Like right now I am just taking Cotrimotrizine on its own because I have run out of medication. I have to travel as far as Malawi to get my medication…
Lily Napata
As you can see, more still needs to be done and we need to come together and redouble our efforts. Zimbabwe has one of the highest AIDS prevalence rates in the world. Among the root causes of this devastation is the devolution of the Zimbabwe government leading to neglect, the collapse of health care in the nation and the shortage of all resources, promiscuity and social reluctance to face up to the drastic measures required not only to address the situation but resolve it.
Through the global fund there are many programs that are working to make ARV’s affordable for all. I hope that there will be many responses to your request on this blog. As we have many who are in the same dire straits you find yourself in.
As a ministry we can only do so much, but if each of us targets a specific area we can make a huge difference. The impact of AIDS on our families has been extensive. Nearly 10% of Zimbabwe's population is children who have lost both parents to the pandemic; nearly 1 million children are orphaned! In Zimbabwe everyone is either infected or affected by this pandemic. We believe that the long term solution for these AIDS orphans is not to institutionalize them, but to design a fostering program that helps place children in a family environment. It costs about just over US$25 a month per child for food, clothing, and education that ensures a future for these children who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in a horrific situation.
We have built a state-of-the-art solar powered orphanage that house’s 38 children who are treated to quality care, a full education, and regular medical check ups. As with everything we do in the ministry, we built this orphanage to be a prototype for similar caring units we desire to build throughout the country. Celebration Ministries International funds all aspects of Compassion Ministries, including salaries for approximately 20 full-time staff. We do have partner churches in other countries, but most of the money is raised in Zimbabwe. My goal as pastor is to give church members a vision regarding what can be done and then encourage them that they are the ones to make it happen.
These programs are time consuming, expensive and labor intensive, so we are designing them to survive more than one generation. As with all our programs, our greatest challenge is to do something that will perpetuate itself into future generations.
Through the program, we are not only building people who are becoming productive members of the Kingdom but transforming lives and reforming this nation.
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