| August 2008 |
St. Lucia Newsletter |
Issue 3 |
St. Lucia Hospice and Orphanage
+255.784.611892
stlucianursinghome@yahoo.com
| IMPORTANT VISITS:
 In January professor Kim Moody from the University of
Maine's School of Nursing visited St. Lucia. The professor is developing a
partnership with the UNIVERSITY OF Kilimanjaro medical centre school of nursing
program based in Moshi. The partnership will provide training for the nursing
students at both schools. The University of Maine students will learn how to
provide care in resource-limited situations and the University of KCM students
will learn ways to improve their standard of care. The overall goal of the
partnership is to improve the quality of care provided by these students. St.
Lucia will serve as a training location for the students to understand and
improve the care of HIV-infected patients. Additionally, they will work at
ways to improve and expand St. Lucia's hospice care.
In
May, we were visited by Connie Naber the DIRECTOR of KARAMA CONNECTION. It
was at this time when community leaders on behalf of St.Lucia board of trustees
decided to give thanks to this influential donor who have made tremendously
support to St. Lucia including building of the house currently being used for
orphans and terminally ill patients. Her sister, Jean, and her niece, Kelsey
accompanied her.
Recently,
we also had visits by several of the children's sponsors. We had a party for
Johnny Bosco's 3rd birthday and his sponsor was able to travel all
the way from New Mexico in the United States to attend. When Johnny Bosco
arrived at St. Lucia he was extremely malnourished; through the support of his
sponsor and the care of the St. Lucia staff, he has improved immensely and in
April, Bariki's sponsor visited us, we toured our new facility and to spend
time with Bariki and the rest of the kids and staff at St. Lucia. Bariki is the
eldest Orphan at our centre, he is 17 yrs old in secondary school, from two
St.Lucia adopted him after suffering from adult malnutrition, boils and
tuberculosis, he is under ARV drugs and his health is now controlled. |
| NEW ADMISSIONS:
Since our last newsletter, we have admitted two more children
to the St. Lucia orphanage. Neema is a young girl who was referred to us by
World Vision. She is HIV-positive and had skin conditions that needed
treatment. Her father is still alive; however, he is mentally ill, so she had
been living with an old grandmother. However, due to the stigma surrounding
her condition, no one wanted to live with her and she was not receiving
necessary care. At St. Lucia, Neema is receiving proper care and is thriving.
She really enjoys being able to play with the other children.
Fatumah
is the other new admission to St. Lucia. She was living with a family friend
and was believed to be suffering from acute malnourishment. She was
temporarily placed at St. Lucia for treatment. However, on arrival at St.
Lucia, it was clear that Fatumah had been neglected and was suffering from more
than acute malnourishment and will be staying at St. Lucia for longer than
originally anticipated. Additionally, her caretaker has moved and cannot be
contacted. Her condition has improved significantly during her time at St.
Lucia.
Since
January, we admitted seven new adult hospice patients who were referred by
government hospital and some of them were abandoned in the community, five of
them recovered after being in medication and close monitoring of drugs and
nutrition, one of them died, and others are now doing fine. |
SPECIAL THANKS:
 St. Lucia
would like to thank the students at the University of Japan with a friend Tom
Houston of the USA for donating funds, which have been used to provide a home
for pigs to the organization. Though the pigs are small now, by patiently
caring for them, they will eventually grow rather large. At that time, St.
Lucia will be able to sell them for a large amount of money. The profit will
then be used to support the house and the children.
St.
Lucia would also like to thank the Karama Connection. This spring they
donated a van to St. Lucia, which has helped tremendously with caring for the
children at both the orphanage and the daycare. Since the new facility is
further away from town, having our own method of transporting children and
staff has been extremely helpful.
Additionally,
St. Lucia was able to support community members living with HIV/AIDS by
setting up the Community Chicken Project. A chicken coup was built and
chickens were provided to a group of eighteen community members. Having
these chickens will generate a source of income for these individuals. Thank
you to all that made this project possible. |
ST. LUCIA DAYCARE:
Recently, a meeting was held with the parents and
guardians of the children who attend the St. Lucia daycare. The meeting
accomplished two specific goals. The guardian and staff at St.Lucia decided
to raise money every month to establish their own community bank which will
support themselves and have loans in future to support themselves at their
families and reduce the burden of St.Lucia in providing of social support
including material support, food, beddings
Since the daycare is provided for the children at no cost
to the family, this provides a method to for the families to give back to the
organization if their financial situation allows. The second goal
accomplished at the meeting was the creation of a timetable to schedule the
parents and guardians to come and assist on small projects at the daycare.
Were so glad to have a new teacher Mr. Chance Martin, who
is now teaching our children at day care, some of St.Lucia children attend
our day care unit. |
DIRECTOR EVENTS:
|
In order to pass along her extensive knowledge and
experience, Winfrida will be giving a presentation on August 3rd,
2008 at the Community Health Worker Program in Mexico. Her presentation
will be approximately two hours long and will include interactive sections,
case studies, and group work. Through this presentation, Winfrida will
show the participants the usefulness of community health programs for
people with chronic illness and HIV/AIDS. Ideally, it will enable them to
initiate and implement this type of program in their own community. |
GLOBAL FUND PROJECT:
St. Lucia has recently been selected by the
government to receive funding from The Global Fund (to fight AIDS,
tuberculosis and malaria), in conjunction with PACT Tanzania and Save the
Children UK. The funding will be used to serve the most vulnerable
children in the Arusha municipal. St. Lucia staff will work directly
with the community to form workgroups, which will then develop and
implement their own work plans with the financial and supervisory support
of St. Lucia. This type of system will strengthen the people at the
community level and produce sustainable results. Some of the ways in which
these work groups will help is by reconstructing homes in the community,
providing education for the children, paying for the children's medical
bills, providing adequate nutrition supplies for the children, and
establishing small poultry, gardening, and farming projects.
The goals of this project are to reduce the
adverse affects of HIVAIDS, poverty, exploitation and abuse on orphans and
children identified as most vulnerable. And rolling out national plan of
action in caring for most vulnerable children in the community. This will
be a 3 yrs project and will cater to 50% of the ward in the Arusha
Municipality and will provide Basic services for the
children as underlined below, but it is our goal to reach 18,000 children
through this support.
| HEALTH
CARE SUPPORT:
This will be done under enrollment of children to free
treatment and other health care support example referrals to other health
institution for more check up by using of cards registered under St. Lucia
and government. Provision of treated mosquito nets to avoid diseases e.g.
Malaria, health education at family level will be provided. 
Through
this support on 29 - 31 August St.Lucia has partnered with the government to
provide vaccines on measles' and schistomiasis to children under 10 yrs, and
provision of vitamin A and deworming as a national campaign to fight this
diseases. We managed to identify and verify malnourished children by
measuring of weight, height according to ages of the children, verify disabled
children and children with special needs who will need urgent referrals e.g.
those founded with sickle cell anemia and diabetes, HIV positive, mental
retardation who live in most vulnerable situation.
|
PRIMARY & SECONDARY
EDUCATION:
School supplies and materials, uniforms will be
provided. Children will be reached and provided with tuition fees, uniforms,
clothing and other educational materials. |
|
St. Lucia has successfully managed to distribute bedding, mosquito nets, cleaning materials to most vulnerable children and patients in the two wards of Arusha and Arumeru districts aiming to reach 120 people, who live in difficult circumstances and are infected with HIV/AIDS. This activity intended to help minimize cross infections and thus reduce opportunistic infections such as malaria, tuberculosis and others. Health education of proper handling of food, proper use of toilet, hand washing, and importance of having enough air, and discourage keeping cattle in the house, has been taught in the Maasai families.
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VOCATIONAL
TRAINING:
Enrollment fees, uniform and other clothes, other educational materials, start up kits - children will be enrolled for a one year training course
Shelter
Houses will be constructed, renovated supplied with
beddings to children together with household equipment and utensils.
Community has to use their resource e.g. labor and available resources e.g.
stones and sand to support this program. We have already have strong
community link with leaders at the community level who are ready to support
the children by using their local resources.
Food and nutrition<
Children will be supplied with food and fortified meals
for under five years old. |
PSYCHOSOCIAL SUPPORT:
| Children will be visited in their families and help families to cope with the situation, help parents writing will, counseling to children and formation of peer groups, drama and allows them playing. |
INFECTIOUS
DISEASE OUTBREAK:
| Three children at the orphanage are under ant
tuberculosis drugs, where by chicken pox was diagnosed to one of the new
admitted child, quarantine measures has been taken to prevent other children from
being infected we all Remember that two yrs ago two children died at St.Lucia
from chicken pox outbreak. |
NEW STAFF:
Dr. Mariam, a pediatrician from the Government
hospital visits a child at St. Lucia. She will be working as part time staff,
Simba Sizar as Program Manager
Fortrunata Kayombo,
Monitoring and Evaluation.
Eusebia Massawe,
Children Care |
TRAININGS:
There was refresher training provided for our community
health worker on Baraa and Moshono, the reason was to equip them with new
knowledge of Palliative care and follow - up for patients on ARV's and
Community Mobilization to keep the program sustainable at the community
level.
Two staff of St. Lucia, Mr. Chance Martin, a Day Care
Teacher, and Ms. Tobadma Benito, a nurse and HIV/AIDS counselor has attended
the training on psychosocial counseling for vulnerable children, this
includes counseling to children, caretaking skills, children rights and
advocacy, and this training has enabled them to train other trainers for more
caregivers, community health workers, local leaders and other stakeholders in
the community. |
GOOD NEWS;
Baby Isaya Matalani Age 2yrs.
 He was left by his mother who died at St.Lucia two yrs
ago, her mother was HIV positive and she was counseled by St.Lucia staff not
to breast feed the baby when she was admitted at St.Lucia, she was in
St.Lucia hands since his mother died in our hospice, he has now tested HIV
NEGATIVE, and St. lucia is working hard
to find the extended family who can accept and raise the boy as we only raise
HIV positive children.
John Bosco Age 3 YRS
The child was referred to our Orphanage last year, he was very sick and in
fourth stage of Aids. He was under Tuberculosis medication, and severe
pneumocytis carinii treatment and thus made him delay starting ARV. He has
now improved and Antiretroviral initiated, which has made his condition very
weak, were working very hard to improve his life by adhering to his drugs and
proper nutrition as required by his physician.
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