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Women and children bear the brunt of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Zambia. | An Australian nun is saving the lives of children living with HIV/AIDS in a remote parish in Zambia.
Sister Marie Bourke FMDM is one of three Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood working with children in the remote Kasaba region, Luapula in northern Zambia, 730 kilometres north of the capital Lusaka.
One in five people there have HIV/AIDS and a staggering 50 per cent of children at the local school have lost their family to the disease.Catholic Mission funds Sister Marie’s work and she says many orphans would not have survived beyond infancy without the nutritional food and medicine provided by the Franciscan Sisters.
“We are very proud of our work over the last 15 years and it is absolutely certain that if we weren’t here, many children would not be alive today. We’re very proud of our very low child mortality rate. ”
Sister Marie is reluctant to put a figure on how many children with HIV/AIDS the Sisters have saved over the past decade but says they’ve seen a steady increase in the number of orphans in need of their care.
“What we’re seeing more of are what we call ‘double orphans’, those children who’ve lost their parents to HIV/AIDS and literally have no one to care for them,” she said.
For Sister Marie and her team, caring for children with HIV/AIDS is a job that begins at birth and a new initiative in Luapula is post natal infant monitoring.
“We also care for mothers and babies in their homes and we’re starting to monitor children for HIV/AIDS. We’re also working with mothers who might have been exposed to HIV/AIDS, especially during the delivery of a child.”
Sister Marie says that although women in Luapula are tested for HIV/AIDS, they can opt not to be told of the test results and some may have the disease and not be aware of it.Luapula is populated by the Bemba speaking people who are scratching a bare subsistence from farming and fishing.Only 30 per cent have an education above basic primary school level and one in five have HIV/AIDS.
“Certainly living conditions are becoming worse for the Bemba speaking people. Because of the remoteness of Luapula they are dependent on the government to provide transport, otherwise the vast distances they would have to travel with their crops by bike would wipe out their meager profits. They are also dependent on the government for fertilizer. Both transport and fertilizer are increasingly difficult to obtain.”
The Franciscan Sisters have been working with the Bemba people on sustainable farming projects but Sister Marie stresses that sustainable development projects are ‘long term’ projects.
“You have to be very patient if you want to introduce change, such as growing soya. Education offers the best chance for a better future in the short term.”
The Sisters are also looking towards the future by actively encouraging Zambian girls to aspire to a Religious vocation.
“Although we’re based in a parish, I do travel many kilometers encouraging girls in other parts of Zambia to think about a vocation because, unfortunately, the local literacy is not high enough to provide the education level girls to enter a Religious life.”
Sister Marie is currently in Australia where she hopes to raise more than $10,000 to build a vocations house.
“It will be a new house for first level religious formation, pre-novitiate, where girls can be formed in educational and religious development,” she said.
If you would like to support the Sister Marie’s work and other projects working with women and children in Zambia please phone Catholic Mission on 1800 257 296. |
