Appeal From African United Partnerships

I received the following letter from the African United Partnerships blog recently, concerning their efforts to provide much-needed training in the Cameroon, to help combat the frighteningly high rate of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS:

"Hi Mike,
I started a blog meme project for saving children and thought you would be interested in getting involved. African United Partnerships needs the help of fellow bloggers. Our goal is to save 200 children's lives in Africa by preventing the transmission of AIDS/HIV from mother to child. To do this, we need to raise $6,600 and your help by blogging and spreading the word about this cause. That's just $33 to save a single child's life. We are working with 12 health service stations in Africa to train people with methods of preventing mother to child transmission (pMTCT) of AIDS/HIV. This is all done through pre- and post natal care training and implementation."

Hans Strock
http://blog.africanunitedpartnerships.org

The number of people living with HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa by the end of 2007 was an estimated 22,000,000; the highest number for any one country being South Africa, at an estimated 5,700,000. The estimate for Cameroon was 540,000.

Apparently there is very little understanding amongst both women and clinic staff in Cameroon about the transmission of the deadly virus from mother to child, or how to prevent it. In fact, they don't seem to even understand that it might be prevented. The aim of this project is to begin the appropriate training there on a limited sale, in the hope that their success will open doors for the expansion of the programme.

I received a full report from Hans concerning the project; I'm sure that they would be happy to provide it to anyone who requests it.

To quote their conclusion in the report:

"The growing infection of children through MTCT (mother to child transmission) requires well thought through and targeted interventions to prevent more children from living with HIV from birth. This project is structured to do just this. Starting small (small is beautiful), the project will seek to make an impact that would stand out as self-evidence for scaling up. This show case aspiration calls for a resourceful pooling of leadership and managerial skills to promote effective and efficient implementation."

If you would like to learn more about this project, please visit their website at http://blog.africanunitedpartnerships.org

Frankly, HIV/AIDS isn't just about dying. For little children with full-blown AIDS, the physical suffering that these poor little people have to endure before they die can be a fate worse than death. They are just little children. They don't know why they feel the way they do.They suffer and they're frightened. And it may not have been necessary. Anything that anyone can do to help to prevent these little babies from being condemned to this terrible fate before they are even born, is well worth doing.