Door to Door with Mdumbi HBC

I was given the opportunity to spend the day going door to door with the caregivers of Mdumbi Home Based Care this past week. What an eye opening experience that was! It was amazing and eye openning for me to be able to see into the lives of the people of the community in which we are working.

From this experience I was able to see first hand the work that the caregivers are doing everyday. This gives me a better idea of how to add quality to their program. One thing I noticed about the Mdumbi group is that they seem to be working more as social workers, than healthcare workers. Many of the homes that we visited were those of orhpans or vulnerable children (OVCs) and we talked to the guardians about how to get foster care grants and how best to care for the children. While we did see some patients with medical problems, such as TB or chronic pain, I saw more counselling being done than hands on patient care.

The ability to counsel clients and direct them to the appropriate services are definate strengths, however these strengths need to be built upon with other forms of care, such as bathing patients and treating minor medical issues as there is a high need of these forms of care in their community.

A couple of images from the day:

Nosiseko has been counselling this tata in how to care for his 2 orphaned grandchildren who have come to live with him. She is helping him to get a Foster Care grant and teaching him important things about caring for children.

This Mama lives alone and had no one to care for her when she was released from the hospital after being treated for TB so Ntombifikile visits her every day and cooks and cleans for her and gives her a bath.

Introduction

As part of Transcape's HIV/AIDS program we are currently supporting 3 home based care groups. Home based care is an important part of the HIV program, giving support to those people in the community who are bedridden or elderly. The caregivers go door to door to see patients and assist them with their basic needs, going to the clinic or hospital and accessing governments services.

Siyakhula Home Community Based Care was the first group to be established. Lindelwa Portia has worked as their project leader since the beginning, and with her help the group has been able to become an independant Non Profit Organization and receive funding from the Department of Social Development.

Mdumbi HBC and Philisa HBC are our newer groups, both groups came together in 2008. Lindelwa has also helped these groups to start up and given them some training in homebased caring. They are still both in the development stages however, with alot of organizational work still to be done. Philisa has completed an NPO application and has submitted a funding proposal to Social Development and is now just waiting to hear back for their answer. Mdumbi is still working on preparing their constitution and business plan to submit to Social Development with their application and proposal.

In October participatory workshops were held with all three groups to discuss the work they are doing in their communities and their goals and needs for the future. These workshops were all very successful and the information gathered from them will be transfered into the HIV strategy that is being put in place by Transcape.

Some of the needs raised by the groups:

-Home based Care Kits, with the supplies needed to treat their patients when they do home visits. Supplies such as gloves, masks, disposable nappies, pain killers, etc.

- Philisa and Mdumbi need offices. Philisa has now been given a plot of land from the ward counsilor and Mdumbi is still in discussions with thier ward about their plot.

-Gardens. All three groups would like to have gardens where they could grow vegetables to give to their patients who have no food and sell to make money for other projects they would like to begin.

Also in October, all three groups were given 50 laying hens. The eggs were meant to be given to the OVCs and then sold as a source of income for the group. The groups have had some trouble with getting the chickens to start laying eggs, however as the chickens settle down into their new homes we should begin to see more eggs than we know what to do with.

These groups are all extremely energetic and passionate about the work that they are doing in their communities. I am excited to see how these groups develop in the next few months as