Letters From Africa

Letter from CHOMP
"Children’s Homes Outreach Medical Program"

Dr Michelle Meiring
Johannesburg , South Africa
CHOMP Director and Pediatrician
January 2005

“South Africa is finally rolling out treatment to children in the state sector. We assist homes by doing pre-HAART assessments (clinical staging, CD4 counts etc) and then refer on to the Pediatric HIV clinics in the government sector hospitals. At the moment, I am the only full-time doctor on the CHOMP project, and do not have the capacity to follow up all the children from homes who are on treatment.

Unfortunately the ARV rollout (State) is a lot slower than we would have liked and the backlog of children needing therapy currently exceeds the capacity of the few roll out sites that have been established. I have had a few children die while waiting to get on to state programs. These are the children that would benefit from what I call "stopgap" funding for treatment. We have, in fact, been more successful in putting children in homes on privately sponsored treatment than children in the community at large. This is largely because of organizations and individuals such as yourselves (Roses & Rosemary), which many of the homes have been able to link up with.

I have one childrens home in an area with no nearby state ARV service that we have fortunately been able to get on to treatment through a PEPFAR funded ARV program administered by the South African Catholic Bishop's Council (SACBC).  Eighteen children are in this childrens home on ARV's that I supervise directly.

CHOMP also conducts workshops for childrens homes (on request), to teach staff about anti-retrovirals and to come up with practical ways of administering the drugs to several children simultaneously.

I am very passionate about Anti-retroviral treatment, and have seen many children transformed by it. I have also seen childrens homes' staff encouraged by its benefits, as previously they were very demotivated by the number of children dying from AIDS in their care.”