Scottish Borders Africa Aids Group

Thursday 11th November, 2010

The Scottish Borders Africa Aids Group helps people who are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS.  Small ‘seeding’ grants are given to projects, known personally to members.  These are regularly monitored, and send back annual reports.

At the AGM,  SBAAG Chairman Morag Brown told members that, during 2009-10, nearly £11,000 had been disbursed to specific projects in Zambia, South Africa, Malawi and Ethiopia

Following the AGM,  Kathy Henry, from Peebles, spoke about the Funsani Hospice at Kitwe, a very poor area of Zambia’s copper belt badly affected by mine closures.  Funsani was set up as an AIDS orphanage by brother and sister Chemalanga and Dr Apakombwele Chisuse.  Also within the community are two women’s groups of 10-12 women, each group caring for over 100 children.

Last year, Kathy, a retired primary teacher, was able to go out to look at the education available to them.   One glaring problem was the lack of books.   The Mutende Basic School set aside a room as a library, SBAAG provided a small grant to enable a local carpenter to put up shelving  and Kathy provided some 500 carefully chosen books. It is hoped that future purchases might be of books printed in Africa.

Kathy and her husband Brian have just returned from a visit to Kitwe and the new library.  The two women’s groups run a number of projects, such as buying 2-day old chicks and selling them on at 6 weeks, all cash raised being pooled.  At Mutende, the women are taught agricultural skills such as crop rotation, irrigation and soil improvement (recycling that chicken manure!).  On her first visit, Kathy taught some of the women to knit garments for sale and they are now passing on their new skills to the girls. 

During the discussion which followed Kathy’s talk many points of interest were raised by members of the audience.  In particular, the financial problems hitting donors, compounded by governmental changes, especially in the UK and America, are causing a crisis in funding for many African hospitals.  There were serious concerns that the anti-retroviral programmes of treatment for AIDS patients will be affected