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Pasadenans’ Donations towards Medical Help Reach Thousands of Africans

Published on Thursday, January 9, 2014 | 5:28 am
 

A jeep-like white vehicle filled with medical supplies and four hospital staff travels to different locations in Malawi, Africa everyday. Pasadenans made it happen.

The four mobile clinic staff is now used to their routine at every stop: the driver will help in carrying the supplies, the clinical officer checks on the patients and writes them prescriptions, the nurse runs blood and other laboratory tests for the patients, and the medical assistant sets up a pharmacy.

About 150 to 200 Africans await the mobile vehicle each day, and it helps about 40,000 patients every year.

Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance (GAIA) facilitates the Thomas Family Mobile Clinic, named after Pasadena’s Dr. Donald Thomas. A large part of its funding is donated by Pasadena residents.

The Alliance recently held its “Art Saves Lives” project last November at Noor. The proceeds were used to fund the mobile health clinic which was named after Pasadena humanitarian Dr. Don Thomas.

“What we’ve set as an organization is we don’t want to start a clinic that we aren’t certain we can continue,” said GAIA President Todd Schafer. “So we really are fundraising them to different tracks. One is we put a charge to the Pasadena community.”

Schafer addressed the problems facing many poor residents of Malawi.

“The biggest problem that Africa is facing, health-wise, is that most people live off the grid,” Schafer said. “So even though there are now antiretroviral drugs available, if you live off the grid and you don’t go into the district hospital where they’re available, you don’t get tested, you don’t find out that there’s a way to save yourself.”

The nonprofit’s medical mobile, facilitated mainly by their Malawians staff, also serves like an ambulance for the community.

“It acts as an effectively an extension of the district health facilities,”said Schafer, who succeeded GAIA founder Rev. Bill Rankin after the latter retired. “The point of GAIA’s programs, in particular the mobile clinics, is to extend that grid out into the farthest corners of Malawi.”

Schafer said the mobile runs on a schedule in such a way that each target location will be visited regularly once a week.

The group first attends to the patients with urgent or critical cases such as children with high fever, and unless the last one of them has been served, the medical staff will not pack up, Schafer said.

Three mobile clinics are currently operating in the area, but Schafer said the group is on its way to dispense two more after training were conducted.

Next step

Schafer said the group’s next project is to have five Don Thomas Clinics to serve every resident of Mulanje District in Southern Malawi, so that each of them “would be within one-hour walk of health care once a week.”

“The Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation launched this program. They asked us recently what it would take so that every member of Mulanje District [would be served],” he said.

The five clinics are what is needed, he added.

Schafer said the funds that the nonprofit raised will be able to sustain the mobile project for a couple of years.

“All of the money raised there brought us to that standard,” he said.

Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance provides basic health services, targeting prevention, care, and support in communities affected by HIV, AIDS,TB and malaria in Africa. It was founded in June 2000 in response to the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.

“It’s an incredibly hopeful time in the AIDS world because we now have the tools to have an AIDS-free generation, but at the same time, the crisis is as raging as much as it ever has [because of poverty],” Schafer said.

“So, our mission has been to connect people who are off the grid — off the healthcare grid — to the healthcare grid,” he added.

For more information on the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance, visit http://www.thegaia.org.

 

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