treatment Archives - Jake Lyell

Post Tagged with: "treatment"

Leave it to the Experts: Innovative HIV Programs in Malawi

June 30, 2014

We’ve reached a global hinge point in the treatment of HIV. People living with the disease are no longer passive beneficiaries. After more than a decade of receiving health and nutrition training, HIV+ people are often times living healthier lifestyles than many of their negative peers. Catholic Relief Services‘ Expert Client program places trained HIV+ community members in local health facilities where they guide new patients through the rigors of anti-retroviral treatment (ARV). By using their own experience of living with the disease to counsel and mentor, they empower the new patients to live more healthy and productive lives. I recently shot and produced this video for CRS in southern Malawi. The program is funded by USAID.

Saving Grace

September 13, 2010

Two weeks ago, Grace seemed like any other nine year old girl in northeastern Uganda’s Amuria District. She was attending school and helping her mother around the house. Suddenly she was unable to hold down food. The medicine her mother bought at the local clinic was of no help. Now Grace hasn’t eaten in over two weeks and weighs just 13 kilos (28 pounds). Sores on her lips and mouth make any ingestion of food far too painful to bear. Grace’s mother, Sarah Kembi (27), found out that her daughter was HIV positive only two years ago. Since that time Grace has been taking Septrin, a stabilizer drug that, while not an ARV, still reduces the chances of opportunistic infections. Sarah’s husband, Grace’s father, succumbed to AIDS around the same time Mrs. Kembi figured she had better get her daughter tested. Though Grace was likely healthy enough to forgo ARV[…]

Braving the Swarm: Malaria in Uganda’s Amuria District

June 2, 2010

Amuria Health Centre has been packed beyond capacity in recent weeks, with more people occupying the floors than hospital beds. As the rains continue to fall, more and more people here contract malaria. During the rainy season, when streams rise and lowland areas become flooded, mosquitoes breed in greater numbers. This health centre’s resources (Amuria has no official hospital) are stretched thin even outside the rainy season. The entire district of over 300,000 shares just one doctor for all its public health centres. He travels around from village to village and is rarely in one place for more than a day. When medicine and supplies are available, the cost is picked up by the government. When they run out, which is all too often, the only option for patients is to pay cash for drips, drugs, and needles from the local pharmacy and bring them to the hospital. “Most of[…]