the rise of home-based care
the past few days have been an interesting mix of activity – some more productive than others, but certainly unpredictable as the weather has been here lately. audrey and i spent the majority of this week in swayimane following our daily routine with the few SHGs we’ve decided to focus on – documenting their progress, identifying potential areas of their growth and capacity building, as well as training 2 new community facilitators new to the zimele team. however, a few important meetings that were planned in advance were abruptly canceled on us at the last minute due to fears of thunder and lightning expressed by some of the women who believed they were victims of spiritual curses. i could not help but be very frustrated by this incident, but i am slowly learning to be patient and tolerant of creeds that arise from these traditional belief systems. in this respect, community work can be a real challenge.
earlier this week, i met with mildred who is driving the core of efforts to establish and distribute home-based care for those who are suffering from TB, HIV/AIDS and other diseases. these are people who either cannot afford treatment or whose family has abandoned them in their own rooms to be left to suffer and in many cases, die. i have yet to witness this kind of destruction with my own eyes, but i am constantly surrounded by stories of tragic illnesses and deaths where the very essence of humanity is stripped away up to the very last hours of life. i believe somewhere around 1 in 4 people in swayimane will experience death without care. i’m only beginning to understand the degree of courage and selflessness that one must acquire to put themselves in front for these people – to care for them, to nourish them, and to commune with them so that they too, can know that they are worthy and are men and women of dignity. mildred is one of the rare few who puts herself in these very shoes and understands the real need for compassion to serve those who suffer and have been abandoned from their own habitat.
her role is a vital one, and i hope to see her efforts grow in combating this terrible reality. the HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to burn like a raging fire and the consequences are perpetually devastating. more often than not, it feels like a losing battle – but there must be a stronger resolve to build the lives of these people with better education, poverty alleviation, strengthening of family units, reduction (eradication) of gender inequality – and above all, revival of ubuntu that is most needed to bring these life decisions into perspective.
with regards to home-based care, i feel there is a real opportunity here to build a network of community health workers that can promote preventive care, collect public-health related information, encourage treatment and reliably detect those at risk for TB, AIDS, and other debilitating diseases. swayimane has only 1 health clinic, and the efforts that mildred is fighting so hard to sustain can be overly exhausting and limited. mobile technology can and should play a huge role here, and i am working hard to promote ideas of remote health monitoring systems that can lift transport barriers and better track disease symptoms to encourage care-seeking behavior. creating a network of community health workers with the right tools could also act as a stimulus to create new jobs and services that could benefit groups like zimele SHGs by providing additional means for them to obtain new skills and further stimulate the local economy.
