Montie FM donates to Motherly Love Foundation
Children and adolescents living with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) are confronted with various challenges that make it difficult for them to socialise and participate in activities with their peers, or cope with the neglect by their families and friends, making them live in isolation.
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In Ghana, for instance, poverty and the high stigma related to HIV often prevented young people who are HIV-positive from accessing the health care and social support they need and from staying in school, both of which limit their progress for the future.
HIV Sentinel Survey report
The summary of the 2013 Ghana AIDS Commission HIV Sentinel Survey report estimated that 34,557 children were living with HIV. The report said there were also 7,812 new infections out of which 2,407 were children between the aged 0 to 14.
It is against this background that Montie FM, an affiliate station of Accra-based Radio Gold, has donated assorted food items, including bags of rice, cooking oil, drinks, detergents, Milo beverage, milk, clothing, some bibles and an undisclosed amount to the Motherly Love Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that supports children living with HIV.
The donation formed part of its yearly outreach programme dubbed, “Yi Bi Boa” in which the station partners its listeners and a growing number of corporate bodies to support and provide the special needs of less fortunate people.
Motherly Love Foundation
Motherly Love Foundation was started in 2008 by Reverend John Azumah and his wife, Mrs Lydia Azumah, both living with HIV, to support and cater for children and orphans living with HIV.
Presently, the foundation caters for more than 70 children, some of them living with Rev. Azumah’s family, while the rest are scattered in some communities in Accra.
The foundation, during its monthly meetings, gives them some psycho-social education on how to overcome stigma, the need to take their antiretroviral drugs and how to socialise with people.
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Need education
Presenting the items to the foundation, the Marketing Manager of Montie FM, Mrs Lauratu Omar A Sawawadogo, called for more public awareness and education on HIV, stressing that, “there is the need for more education to be done on the disease because HIV is no respecter of persons as it is not contracted only through sexual means.”
Additionally, she said it was sad that families of children who were infected with the disease often abandoned them at the doorstep of the foundation without caring about what they ate or how they lived.
“We thought that if an individual is able to take care of not only orphans but those with HIV, then they surely need help, no matter how much the government might be giving in terms of support”, she said.
Need support
Receiving the items, the Founder of Motherly Love Foundation, Rev. John Azumah, lauded the staff and listeners of Montie Fm for providing for the needy in society.
He said although the foundation was presently facing some challenges, convincing the infected children to take their antiretroviral medication was a major hindrance.
“Some do not know why they should take the antiretroviral drug because they are strong and they do not know that they are positive. So we have to take the pain to let them know their condition and the reason why they need to take the drug for their entire life to sustain them”, he said.
Another challenge, he said, was helping the children to know their CD4 (cluster of differentiation 4) count, a lab test that measures the number of CD4 cells in a sample of blood.
For people with HIV, it is the most important laboratory indicator of how well your immune system is working and the strongest predictor of HIV progression.
However, Rev. Azumah said most often when the children were taken to the public hospital for the test, there were no reagents available to run it.
“We have to take them to a private laboratory where it costs between GH¢200 and GH¢250 to run the test, though it is supposed to be free at the government hospital”, he said.
Stigmatisation
Stigmatisation, he said, was another challenge facing the foundation so he urged the general public to desist from such acts, adding, “Today you might be stigmatising people, tomorrow you might not know what will happen to you. So accept everybody as they are in your community. You have to accept people living with HIV.
“The person close to you whose status is not known to you is even more dangerous than I who have disclosed my status to you. Just be careful but don’t stigmatise me”.
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