Tuesday, April 8 - Morning

This morning we woke up to another sunny day. We loaded into the trucks and drove to Manga-Mascarenhas Health Centre. It is mostly an outdoor facility with consultation and examining rooms around the side. There were easily 200 people waiting to be seen and many of them had been there since 5 AM. The health workers said that they will usually stay until 3 PM but never leave until every patient has been seen for the day. There is actually only one doctor in the area that services 35,000 people. This centre is primarily used to treat malnourished children, but of course come across children with HIV as well. It is difficult to treat a child for both malnurtion and HIV. ARVs are difficult to take on an empty stomach, are not well tolerated by a severely malnourished person and are less effective. At the same time, a malnourished patient living with AIDS does not respond to the usual treatment for malnutrition with the therapuetic milk or food as effectively as an HIV-negative patient. We saw many many children and several newborns. One family was off in another area and we had a chance to speak with them. The young girl's name is Mother. She is five years old, and certainly acts like a mother by carrying her younger sibling who is almost half her size. Some of the children came right up to us to say hello, but most would simply look on with curious, solemn faces. From the Nutrition Centre in Beira we drove to Chimoio. A rural town due west in the province of Manica. In the afternoon, Shazanna, Saim, and I took a walk down the street and happened upon another NGO that focuses on HIV and AIDS. We walked up to the porch to take a look at their bulletins and were invited in for a briefing. They have a very similar strategy to UNICEF. (UNICEF mentioned that many smaller organizations will piggyback off their efforts) It works quite well as UNICEF will discover the programs that work and then other organizations initiate them. It was interesting to see the other end of the spectrum as this NGO had very little funding. They are still very committed to battling the challenges of HIV and AIDS in Mozambique.