Reach Out Effort Offers Hope to Innocent AIDS Babies in Africa 
By JIM HALL, Special Correspondent

MIRACLE BABY: Without the help of WCF`s "Reach Out Mbuya" assistance, little Emmanuel wouldn`t have any hope or future. Not only was his mother Madina saved, but her baby is AIDS free! (ROM Photo) 
KAMPALA, Uganda – Thanks to an exciting new community based outreach to HIV-AIDS babies, World Children`s Fund is helping turn the tide in the war against AIDS among innocent baby victims and needy children in Africa.

"The Reach Out Mbuya treatment program is a model for the future, and we are thrilled that it is being imitated all over Africa," says Dr. Joseph Lam, founder and president of WCF.

Last year on Christmas night in Kinawataka, a slum in Uganda, a baby was born. This boy, named Emmanuel by his devout mother, is a sign of hope for the future. Only a year and a half earlier, she had been near death – HIV positive and fighting tuberculosis.

An allergic reaction to the TB medication (called Stephen Johnson’s syndrome) had caused her whole body to swell like a balloon. Her skin was peeling off, and she was hardly able to breathe. It was then that she met Margarethe Juncker, director of Reach Out in Mbuya. She was able to save Madina’s life through an intervention that was only made possible by the “Reach Out” strategy. 

Reach Out is a holistic HIV/AIDS care program in the Mbuya area that distributes the food and medicine necessary to combat HIV/AIDS and deadly viral infections such as tuberculosis and malaria. What sets this particular program apart is its use of the strategy known as DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment - Short Course).

World Children`s Fund is not only sponsoring the program in Uganda, but has recently started to help another DOTS effort in Swaziland. Using volunteers from local churches and community organizations as “trained observers” Dr. Lam hopes the idea will spread all over Africa in the next 10 years, helping save millions of lives.

This approach utilizes existing social infrastructures found within the community; a local church in the case of Mbuya. The DOTS approach enables organizations to train and mobilize a willing and organized group of volunteers who can then distribute food and medicine; providing essential at-home monitoring for clients in the program. For many, especially orphans with HIV/AIDS, the extra attention provided for in this model means the difference between life and death.

Upon meeting Madina, the Reach Out Mbuya volunteers immediately responded, treating her allergic reaction and providing her with new tuberculosis medication and food. For the medication to work effectively, 11 to 15 different pills must be taken daily at different times, and strict dietary standards must be maintained. 

This is normally an impossibly difficult regimen to adhere to in Africa, but with the supervision and visits by the Reach Out volunteers, Madina successfully completed her tuberculosis treatment program.

Shortly afterward, she began showing signs of pregnancy. Once she would have despaired at the thought of transmitting HIV to her baby, but with the medication Niverapine provided by Reach Out, Emmanuel has been spared from the deadly virus.

With proper diet and anti-retroviral (ARV) medication, Madina now has a chance to live perhaps ten years longer than previously expected. And her baby is AIDS free. Now when Madina looks at Emmanuel, she has in her heart the hope of being able to live long enough to watch her son grow up. 

What Reach Out and their 80 volunteers are accomplishing in Mbuya, Uganda is one of Africa’s biggest success stories. When looking at a graph of the HIV/AIDS death rates in Africa, one immediately notices that the only country where the rates are not increasing is Uganda. 

In fact, the rates there are decreasing. Much of this can be attributed to the adoption of the DOTS strategy within the country, and its ability to effectively treat tuberculosis which is the leading cause of death in HIV-infected individuals in most African countries.

As a result, UN representatives, heads of state, ambassadors, and other important dignitaries around the world are visiting Reach Out Mbuya to study it as a model so that they can implement it in other regions of the continent. 

"The DOTS approach is on everybody’s agenda," states Bill Bray, International Program Director at World Children’s Fund.

"This is where the future of HIV/AIDS treatment has to go and is going," states Bray. "We hope we can help duplicate the successes seen in Reach Out Mbuya throughout Africa and to other countries which are also struggling with this health nightmare." (Updated 2 March 2004, WTB)