Children's work

Many of you are especially interested in the children's work that we do. I guess that children hold a special place in the hearts of most of us. Especially those who are severly disadvantaged in this cruel world by no fault of their own.

The work we do with children is in many ways difficult to pin down, as we really see most of our children in the day to day clinics and visits, and they are seen in with our other patient's mostly, and so it can be difficult to quantify and tie-down.

Currently children do not recieve any HIV/AIDS treatment free from the Government, but that is hopefully going to change. There have been some meetings to discuss setting up government clinics for free medicines and treatment for children, and so all local charities have been asked to compile a list of children with HIV, or who are at risk of contracting HIV.

Thankfully only a small percentage of children born to HIV+ mothers actually have HIV themselves (10-30% depending on circumstances).

Here is a little summary of the children we see

1) JEEVAN SAHARA KENDRA- We currently treat 16 HIV+ children Here in our clinic as our own patients. However we have 40 Children that MAY have HIV, but have not been tested yet. If the children are well, it is often difficult to persuade parents to have them tested.

2) GROWING ORPHAN CONCERN- We also have 4 orphans, but another 16 children with only one HIV positive parent left, and 31 children who have both parents suffering from HIV. Many of these children will become orphans, and there will also be many more as time progresses, and more and more parents die of HIV, leaving healthy HIV- children behind. These children are the future of India. We believe that it is best for children to be with family/relatives where possible, with support if necessary. However sometimes relatives are estranged, or cannot cope. In this circumstance we would like to start a mid-week orphanage, where children stay in an orphanage during the week, but still go back to relatives at the weekend. This project is still only a dream, and not even on paper, but a real desire, and will hopefully come to fruition during my time here in India.

3) PURNATA BHAVAN PATIENTS- Another 14 HIV+ orphans travel from an orphanage 3 hours away to recieve treatment from us. We have been providing this service for 7 months, and when we started, many of the children were on the wrong treatment rom elsewhere.

4) JEEVAN ASHA PATIENTS- A month ago we started treating 55 children who are not HIV+, but attend a pre-school in a local church nearby. They are all from very poor backgrounds. Some may have HIV, but we do not know of any at present.

5) MULUND CHURCH- A nearby suburb has a very motivated house-Church who currently have a small orphanage with 2 of our children, and one of our HIV+ rescued prostitutes acting as warden/mum. 2 of the church members have recently left well paying jobs to seek god's will for their lives, and the Church have a real heart to expand their HIV work.

I hope this gives you some idea of what we are involved in with children. It has actually been quite encouraging for me just to write this out and see all the kids whose lives we are impacting!!