The impact of HIV AIDS on the poor ….

Medicines are now available to those infected by HIV, but many of the poorer people, living in the shanty compounds still either can’t get the medicines or afford the diet and lifestyle needed to make the medicines effective.   So thousands of parents continue to become sick and die, leaving around 1.3 million orphaned children

Life is tough for Julia….

Julia is 10 years old, her parents died some years ago so her grandmother has been looking after her.   But then things started to go wrong and her grandmother became very sick.   She started taking medicine, but with inadequate diet, she was not improving…..

Emaciated and breathing rapidly, she could do very little and so Julia had to bathe her each day, and cook what little food they could manage to find for them to eat. 

 Julia had just walked to the market to buy some cooking oil.  She came back with a small plastic bag of cooking oil – no more than 1 tablespoon to cook some pumpkin leaves on the brazier outside.

Sadly her grandmother died a few weeks later….  Who was going to look after Julia now?

By making visits to the home, Hands of Compassion was showing love and compassion and Julia knew she was not alone.   She is happily now back at our school, in the care of another relative.