AIDS Education and Counselling Centre

Target: £4000

Aids Education and Counselling Centre

When I visited Chidamoyo in December 2002, I tried to find out from Sr Kathy if there was any specific project the Chidamoyo Trust could support. She said that they urgently needed premises for AIDS education. This would be a small hall with four small rooms for meeting and counselling. There are videos on how to prevent AIDS and how to make the best of life with AIDS, but there is no facility to show them.

At the moment support groups exist where HIV-positive patients meet to share their experiences and learn how to cope from each other. The women make story quilts under the guidance of Mrs Pasi, a local school teacher and trained psychologist, but they have nowhere suitable to store them.

At present, people are told that they are HIV positive in the busy matron�s office. In Zimbabwe, where no drugs are available, this means an adult has a life expectancy of four to six years and a baby or pregnant woman has two to four years. A small counselling room would mean that this awful news could be given in privacy.