We’re so delighted to announce that for easier collaboration and networking, we have affiliated Christian Aid Ministries to a network organization known as Life Affirming Pregnancy Help Centers in Africa – AFLA based here in Kitwe at Silent Voices. The founder of this organization is Barbra N. Mwansa the wife to Pastor Edward Mwansa. This organization works with pregnancy help centers in Africa that offer services such as Pregnancy crisis counseling, Pregnancy Testing, Post Abortion Stress Syndrome healing counseling and Ultra-sound scanning and other general scanning services. You can find out more about this organization on their website: www.afla.in.
We have decided to do this because some of our TB and HIV/AIDS clients have been asking for some of these pregnancy services. We have also been seeing how they suffer physically, emotionally, and spiritually when they are told by their doctors to terminate their pregnancies through abortion as a result of their low levels of immune system during TB and HIV/AIDS treatment. The main objective of affiliating CAM to this network organization is to begin to provide some of the above mentioned pregnancy services at our Centre in Buchi at the TB clinic such as Pregnancy crisis counseling, Pregnancy Testing and Post Abortion Stress Syndrome (PASS) healing counseling along with the TB and HIV/AIDS services that we provide to our TB/HIV/AIDS clients to avoid abortion and the traumas that come with abortion such as post abortion stress syndrome that worsens their already compromised health system and lead to death.
We will soon begin to provide these services and Silent Voices will be able to donate some materials such as Pregnancy Test Kits, baby nappies and other services to our organization on a monthly basis.
AFLA is affiliated to Life International which is a member of Heartbeat International, a global organization that promotes the sanctity of human life.
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays: Post Abortion and sexual abuse counseling and healing
So far on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we have been meeting 3 groups of post abortive women and men TB/HIV/AIDS clients who have had abortion and young girls who have been sexually abused for post abortive counseling and healing at our Centre with the help of 2 facilitators who come from AFLA on these days.
Post Abortive and sexually Abused Stress Syndrome (PASS) counseling session at CAM’s Elizabeth Rini Medical Centre in Buchi.
Tuesdays and Thursdays: TB tracking
On Tuesdays and Thursdays we have been going in the field visiting our TB and HIV/AIDS clients in Buchi, St. Anthony, Kamakonde, Mugala, Kawama and Kapoto and Luangwa communities as usual sensitizing.
We also work with Buchi TB clinic to conduct TB defaulter tracking in these communities. We go through the patient books and take the addresses of those TB clients who have stopped taking the TB medication and follow them up in the community. This sometimes becomes very difficult to trace them as some of them relocate to other places while others cheat their addresses so that we can fail to monitor them if they are taking their TB medication consistently and correctly up to full 6 months TB treatment term. This usually happens to TB patients who are in denial when TB counseling was not done correctly from the onset of treatment by the counselors who initiated the patient on TB treatment. But after tracking, them, we take them through TB treatment counseling and care afresh and they adhere to treatment instructions and complete their treatment successfully and get cured of TB and get well again. From May 2019 this year when we seriously started working which TB clinic on this program, we have so far helped 40 TB defaulters who have been cured successfully and are well again. The only challenge they complain about that they say leads them to stopping TB treatment is lack of food to eat while they are taking these drugs. They say the TB drugs are very strong and cannot be taking under an empty stomach. It is our prayer that we resume giving them food like what we used to do on a monthly basis when you were supporting us so that we do not encounter such TB treatment challenges that lead to highly infectious multi-drug resistant TB which is very difficult to cure.
Contact tracking is another activity that we are conducting in the community in collaboration with Buchi TB clinic we visit the TB clients who are on TB treatment and conduct TB screening in TB contacts who may be the TB patients close friend, relative or neighbor who is mostly found with the TB patient. We screen and check for signs and symptoms on these TB contacts. Once we suspect certain signs such as enlarged lymph nodes, coughing for more than 3 weeks, loss of appetite, loss of weight, in some cases coughing up of blood and general tiredness, we recommend them or personally take them to the laboratory at the clinic to be diagnosed of TB by submitting their sputum to the laboratory for TB test that they have to come and collect their results the following day. Once we discover that truly they have TB, the doctor commences them on TB treatment immediately.