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A very special baby shower
Judith King. HIVAN Media Team
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Members and friends of the Manning Road Methodist Church in Durban, KZN, put their heads, hands and hearts together to devise a novel way of honouring World AIDS Day 2003. They held a "Baby Shower for Mary", to which gift-givers brought toys, baby clothing and infant preparations for donation to the iThemba Lethu Transition Home and the Ekuphileni ante-natal Clinic in Cato Manor, Durban.
The iThemba Lethu Transition Home is a "halfway house" providing temporary shelter to children orphaned or abandoned through HIV/AIDS, as well as a loving and supportive family atmosphere of treatment and care for the little ones until more permanent homes can be found for them. The tiny residents range in age from new-born to three years.
The home takes in up to six children at a time, as even though they might not be HIV-positive, a great deal of effort is invested in giving each child full physical monitoring, emotional nurturing and joyful entertainment. Volunteers provide weekend support, and medical care is provided by iThemba Lethu's medical officer.
At the "Baby Shower" function, Dr Heidi Frere described the work of the "MTCT-Plus" project operating at the Ekuphileni ante-natal clinic in Cato Manor, a poorly resourced community residing in a largely informal settlement of shacks and low-level housing. With its mission of "Saving mothers, saving families", this research intervention programme, directed by renowned paediatric HIV/AIDS researcher Professor Anna Coutsoudis, does somewhat more than offer Nevirapine treatment to pregnant HIV-positive women amongst a population of approximately 160 000.
Since its inception in February 2003, the project team has enrolled 230 HIV-positive mothers and their families (infected partners and children) for life-long anti-retroviral treatment, and the study is designed and funded to monitor the progress of these patients over a period of three years. Other aspects of the project include pre- and post-treatment counselling, extensive assistance with infant feeding (and the promotion of exclusive breastfeeding), and more general HIV/AIDS counselling and skills-training.
The two facilities are linked through the work of Prof Coutsoudis and the eKhaya Lempilo team's professional and committed caregivers. Another unique initiative connected to the iThemba Lethu home is the "Breastmilk Bank", a service organised by Prof Coutsoudis and a group of concerned friends in 2001, involving the supply of expressed breastmilk from HIV-negative mothers to nutritionally vulnerable babies being cared for at the iThemba Lethu home.
To contact the iThemba Lethu Breastmilk Bank, contact Shirley Royal by telephone at (031) 303 9138, or via e-mail at [email protected].
For more information about iThemba Lethu Transition Home, Tel/Fax: 27 (0)31 261 7723; Write to: PO Box 41138, Rossburgh 4072, KwaZulu-Natal or e-mail: [email protected]. To visit their website, click on the hyperlink in the righthand column.
To view scenes from the "Baby Shower" event, click through to our Photo Gallery on the righthand side of this page. |
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