By far the greatest challenge facing St Mary's is the battle against HIV and AIDS. An estimated 250 000 people living in our area are HIV-positive and the number of critically ill patients seeking medical help is steadily increasing.

Our goal is to ensure that we are not only up to this challenge, but that we provide dedicated holistic health care to the community that we serve. As a result of funding obtained through PEPFAR (the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and in partnership with the Department of Health and local clinics, St Mary's has been able to establish a number of HIV-prevention and treatment programmes in the community.

The iThemba Family Care Centre dispenses anti-retroviral (ARV) medication to people with AIDS and provides ongoing counselling, support and education for patients and their families.

St Mary's also has an extremely effective Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV Programme, Born to Live.

Outreach
Thanks to advanced technology – and funding from the US government – we’re now able to take our efforts against the disease further by offering HIV tests in people’s own homes. A simple 'prick test' using a disposable card (similar to a home pregnancy test) produces results in under 30 minutes.

If the person tests positive, counselling takes place and further tests are done to determine their CD4 count, which in turn determines whether or not they need to start ARV treatment.

This initiative has been remarkably well received by community members and people are approaching our field workers to ask to be tested. Previously, this was almost unheard of.

We've also recently rolled out the programme to schools within the community, where it has received tremendous support from educators, parents and the learners themselves. While the programme instills a culture of testing in the youth, it also focuses on prevention and post-test counselling to remain negative.

‘People want to find out their status – and want to get help if they do test positive,’ reports
our Community Outreach Co-ordinator.