On Caring

Home Care and the family : At Catholic Aids Action
Aids infects one person at a time, but it affects a whole family at once. There to help families as they cope with the devastation brought by HIV is Catholic AIDS Action, a charity organisation just off busy Independence Avenue.
The Centre concentrates more on the family than on patients, and attends most to young people. According to Maria Breeuwsma, a social worker who works at the centre, about 300 Katutura families and more than 460 affected children have benefited from their counselling, food programs and charity work.

 

Quick Facts

- from the CAA brochure - "Catholic Aids Action challenges the aids pandemic in Namibia with the courage to fight and the strength to care. Catholic Aids Action support programmes of HIV/AIDS prevention, home basic care, spirituality, and support of orphans."

For more infomation:
visit their web site;www.caa-namibia.org
or write to: Catholic Aids Action P.O.Box 11525
Windhoek, Namibia
Tel:264-61-276364 or
Fax:264-61-276364


A lot of this aid comes through a network of volunteers who go into families’ homes and provide basic care.The family is trained on how to clean the patient, how to change their nappy, how to turn them when bedridden and to encourage those who are able to do what they used to do.

 
A family that received help from CAA.

Maria said when they ask the family if they know much about Aids, they say yes, but the fear is still there. But then, she said, "when we send the volunteer there and when they see someone doing it they start asking themselves why not me? They become courageous, and decide to care of the sick." CAA teaches them on what sort of nutrients and foods the Aids patient needs, and explains the symptoms if someone is deficient in a vitamin. They also teach them on how to make yogurt themselves because there is a time that the patient can no longer drink milk.


"They become courageous, and take care of the sick."
They also learn not to force them to eat because of the rash in their mouth and oesophagus.
The Centre has 90 current volunteers who do home basic care and run day programs for the children, including a breakfast program that will begin in October. The Centre feeds them with the income that they get from selling AIDS pins made by patients.
The Centre has trained lots of people and many of them stay on the job.
But many of them drop out - not because they are not committed but because they have not the stamina to keep doing such demanding work. The Centre mostly cares for people who have been sent home from the Katutura Hospital to die with dignity.
CAA volunteers talk to them by giving them counselling and helping them until the last day of their lives.







Right: Catholic Aids Action Volunteers
 

     further reading

UNAIDS: Children young people and HIV/AIDS