Some of the major problems in the area of HIV/AIDS are: reluctance to acknowledge that one is infected; refusal by men to use protection, poverty, lack of support to ensure people follow treatment protocols, lack of knowledge about steps to be taken to greatly reduce the possibility of transmittal to an unborn foetus and denial of the problem.
It is only through ongoing support that people infected with HIV become aware that this is a long term illness which can be controlled with proper medical treatment and it only becomes a terminal illness when treatment is not followed on a daily basis.
The likelihood of an unborn child being HIV positive at birth is very dependent on the mother being aware of the treatment protocol and following this protocol during the pregnancy.
The people who formed Dibanani have worked with clients in a supportive capacity for a number of years and have significant success keeping people on medical protocols and expectant mother's taking treatment but this work has to be expanded to increase the number of people benefitting.
It is time to looked at decreasing the daily deaths of mothers, children and others so that they can benefit from a cure if one is found. The treatment is available and people have to have the support to help them become aware of this and take the steps to acknowledge their conditiion and get help.
It has been suggested that approximately 1000 deaths occur per day in South Africa that are associated with HIV/AIDS and of these approximately 300 are women and children with the majority of the 300 being women and mothers.
The services that the program funds are being monitored on a monthly basis to ensure that clients are receiving the type of services required and also to assess the progress of clients in the program.Also the workers in the program have made a commitment to do fund raising at the local level to help fund the program and needs of the client. They are very active participants in the program and give of their time and scarce resources to ensure that it is meeting it's objectives.
The required funds have been raised thanks to donations on this site and fund raising through other means.
Dibanani AIDS Projects received two Awards from the City of Cape Town department of Health:
A Gold Certificate: For over 90% of antiretroviral treatment clients remaining in care at six months.
A Gold Certificate: For achieving the best antiretroviral treatment outcomes (>95% viral load suppression rate at 6 months).
Dibanani AIDS Project has also seen a 10% growth in clients each month for the last six months.
For more information go to www.dibanani.org
If you are thinking a small donation would not do anything to help a $10 donation pays one staff's salary for a day and every day that is funded by a donation allows other funds raised to cover other areas of service.