Program sites
Tingathe: Community Empowerment to end HIV/AIDS
Community Outreach for Children in Malawi
Tingathe is a community outreach program initiated by Baylor College of Medicine
Children’s Foundation Malawi to help achieve an HIV-free generation. In the
small East African country of Malawi, over 30,000 infants contract HIV from
mother-to-child transmission. Of these children, over 50% will die before the
age of two years, and over 75% will die before the age of seven. Tragically,
despite the widespread availability of life-saving prevention and treatment
modalities in Malawi, most HIV-exposed and infected infants do not access the
care they need.
To help change this situation, Baylor Malawi
initiated a community outreach program called “Tingathe”, meaning “yes we can”
in the local Chichewa language. Tingathe empowers and trains Malawians to serve
as community health workers (CHWs) within their own communities. CHWs conduct
door-to-door HIV testing, adherence supervision,
patient advocacy, as well as community education and sensitization. So far, the
results have been impressive. Within the first two years of the program,
Tingathe community health workers educated over 40,000 people on topics related
to HIV, tested over 30,000 people, identified over 3500 new HIV infected persons, and enrolled
over 1000 children into care. These efforts have led to a dramatic ten-fold
increase in patient enrollment at our participating clinics.
But beyond these
numbers, Tingathe has accomplished something even more critical. Our CHWs, many of whom are HIV-infected or
affected themselves, have contributed to a sense of community between our
clients and have a developed a true safety network for our patients. For many
of our clients, having a CHW has been the first time they have had a true
advocate within the health care system. One of our CHWs, Joel Mposa, summed it
up well when he said, “I really care about these people. They are now like my
blood relatives - they are
my family.” Our CHWs have demonstrated that “yes we can” prevent and control
HIV-AIDS. They have shown that the best way to combat the epidemic is to
empower and mobilize the community. Your support will help us continue and
expand the scope of this work.
Our
hearts in harness, shall beat as one
Arming
the rhythms of its Song
“TINGATHE”
Of
course we can.
-Peter Mponda (Tingathe Community Health Worker)
Posted 2010-03-20 00:15:13 
