Nets and More

More from our trip to Mozambique. (Previous posts here.)

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In the afternoon, we visited with head of PSI in Mozambique and then visited a Maputo suburb.

In the suburb, which felt like a neighborhood, Yara of PSI explained how to use insectcide-treated bednets to a group of children and their caretakers. At the presentation, about 3/4 of the women said they were raising children who were not their own.

After, Yara took us to visit two families. The first was a family of eight (2 parents and 6 children) who live in a small 7 x 9 ft. house. The other was a mother, Regina, who has four children and whose husband died last week. Regina’s mother has bad legs but still commutes an hour and a half to work each day so that she can help feed her grandchildren.

She told us she was tired. And that her legs hurt.

-Virginia Simmons

Playing With Water

More from our Mozambique. (Previous posts here.)

Later in the afternoon we traveled to a marketplace where a theater group, funded by the group PSI, performed a short play about sanitizing water. During the performance we learned that you just need to drop a few drops of the products (certeza) into a jug of water, shake it around, and wait 30 minutes to purify the water. The actors were, well, quite good - and a large crowd, including many children, gathered to watch. At the end, anyone who asked a question got a free bottle of the product. Each bottle is enough for 60 large jugs of water - and usually cost the equivalent of about 30 cents.

Similar theater groups perform plays about malaria and HIV.

-Virginia Simmons

Greetings From Mozambique

Right now I’m writing you from Mozambique - where I have the incredible fortune of traveling with fellow ONE colleagues to visit internationally-funded programs and meet the people they serve.

I have a few moments tonight - so I wanted to post a little about mt first day here and share a few photos.

We began the day at a health clinic funded by PEPFAR in Maputo city. Above to the right is a photo of Fatina, a heathcare worker who showed us around the clinic’s maternity ward. When I asked how she came to this field, she said that she was tracked as an exceptional student since the 6th grade and trained for the profession. She’ said that she’s now delivered thousands of babies.

Fatima also said that they don’t have enough medically-trained staff and, at least at the time of our visit, they were out of antiretroviral (HIV medications) for babies. Also note the holes in the facility’s roof. When it rains outside, it rains in rooms of the clinic.

-Virginia Simmons

1,300 Mozambique teachers die of AIDS each year

A Reuter’s article today highlights the devastating toll of AIDS in Mozambique - and the interconnected nature of disease, education and economic development.

“More than one-sixth of Mozambique’s 9,000 teachers are dying of HIV/AIDS each year, lowering the quality of education and jeopardising future development, a government official told Reuters on Tuesday…

Health officials say more than 16 percent of the 20 million Mozambicans between the ages of 14 and 49 — generally the most economically productive — are infected with HIV, and an estimated 500 new infections occur each day.

“This is a crucial issue for us and we are trying to train more teachers for them to be able to deal with it (the pandemic) in the communities. Teachers play a major role in the economic development of this country”, he said.

Despite its limited skilled labour force, Mozambique’s economy has boomed in recent years, spurred by a rise in foreign investment and development aid, and GDP growth is projected to hit 8 percent this year after reaching 7.5 percent in 2007.

Aly said the devastating effect of HIV/AIDS on the country’s human resources threatened to damage its economic prospects.”

Read the full piece here.