HCT team make local farm visits....

our HCT team at auldearn farm last week

as you may be aware thembacare grabouw offers three services to our community, firstly we have a seven bed inpatient unit which provides the only overnight care beds for a town of around 60,000 people many who are in desperate need of end of life hospice care. secondly our outpatient team care for over 450 people who are living with HIV and or TB in our local community, their daily/weekly visits ensure that people continue with their TB, or understand their HIV, medication to enable them to live a long and productive life and thirdly we have our very own testing and counselling service which enables people to test for HIV, TB, high blood pressure and sugars etc.

we have recently been looking at how we can make the third arm, our HCT (HIV counselling and testing) more effective. we have a converted caravan, which is fully equipped to provide a mobile service, and this is often seen in the community at public open spaces and schools to allow people to come have a chat and maybe even find out their status for those various areas but we really wanted to enable more people to test, so what better place to do that than at the work place.

over the last month we have visited some of the staff at the huge fruit packing sheds which surround the town and last week we made visits to a couple of farms who's managers were keen to help their staff understand more about living with HIV. for us it's so important that people know their status, once this is known then we can help them to start addressing areas of their lives that need to change and also seek professional medical advice if they do find that they have a bigger medical need.

if you would like to find out more about this service then do call our thembacare grabouw office and they will be able to set up a date for us to either bring the caravan to your farm or make a visit to your facility, please note that we are sorry but this is currently limited to the grabouw and elgin region, we aren't able to offer this amazing service nationally or even internationally as yet!

April News

March at ThembaCare Grabouw as usual was a flurry of activity especially with the Easter Public Holidays. ThembaCare Grabouw received many blessings in terms of lots of Easter eggs & hot cross buns for the staff and our patients. The pre-school children at Spielland Pre-School gave our staff and patients Easter eggs. It is so heart warming to see such young children donate their precious Easter eggs towards a good cause!! We remain touched and humbled by this gesture.

Another group of children who have formed a club called “The Water boys”, also donated a signed T’ Shirt to ThembaCare and raised about R120 for our hospice. It really brings us much joy to see that young children are being taught by the adults in their lives about the importance & relevance of Hospice in their community.

Elgin Free Range Chickens has really emerged as one of our fervent supporters amongst the businesses in Grabouw and their blessing to us of hot cross buns for our patients & staff, is truly appreciated.

March was also TB month on the Annual Department of Health’s Health Calendar and our Home Based Care (HBC) ladies partnered with the Grabouw Day Hospital to carry out a door to door TB Screening Campaign in the community. The TB Room at the Grabouw Day Hospital also informed us and thanked our HBC ladies for the 95% TB cure rate for the year 2012!! This major achievement might not have happened without the unceasing hard work of our team of HBC ladies offering HIV & TB adherence care & support daily, to our patients in the community.

Good News! The Department of Health has approved continued funding for 4 of our In Patient Unit beds. We are grateful for this funding support that helps our IPU staff continue providing quality Palliative care to our patients. This month was a particularly difficult month for the IPU as we lost 2 patients within one week to their fight against Cancer. We pray that the Holy Spirit will continue to comfort the bereaved families and also strengthen the IPU staff so they can continue caring for our patients.

October News

This month the workers in parliament dipped into their own pocket and bought ThembaCare Grabouw a much-needed hoist to assist us with lifting patients in and out of bed. This should certainly prevent us getting any back injuries and make it much safer for the patients too! We are very grateful for their generosity.

We still care for 418 clients in and around Grabouw and we have had six patients in the inpatient unit this month.

September News

One of our carers checking a patient's medication

Can you believe it’s just three months until it’s 2013? At this time of year we begin to ask ourselves whether we are on target for all the things we want to accomplish this year. This is how things look so far: Our IPU have had 59 patients this year of which only 13 have died. For us this is an accomplishment and our 16 ladies in the Out Patient Unit are still looking after over 400 patients in the community. We are also very happy to have a smartly painted and improved building to work in.  On top of that some of our staff have been blessed with new children themselves:  Anna, Thandeka, and Jo-Anne have all had daughters and we wish them well with their new additions. So far, so good!

With a short holiday coming up at the end of this week we also just want to say a big thank you to our trusty locum staff. It means a lot to have a well deserved break and to know that the good work will continue while some of us are away on holiday.

August News

August was our coldest month here in Grabouw, with lots and lots of rain and snow capping the surrounding mountains. Despite the hostile weather our home-based care ladies still continue to be true to their calling and are making daily visits to our patients on foot. We have also managed to continue with a lot of refurbishments and this month, thanks again to the Gerald Wright Trust, the whole of the outside of our building now has a fresh coat of paint. It looks very smart!

The inpatient unit has had a mixed month. We sadly lost a patient who gave up the battle with HIV but also happily we were able to send home another patient who had arrived less than a month ago with a very low CD4 of 8. She looks happy and healthy and to see the thanks in her little daughter and mother’s eyes makes our jobs all the more worthwhile. CD4 is a way of measuring the amount of white blood cells your body has for fighting an infection. A person with a normal CD4 is around 1500 to 2000 so you can imagine, when this lady arrived with a CD4 of only 8 we didn’t not know whether she would survive!

One of our male out patients who had been living for years with a tumour on the whole of his back is doing very well after it was surgically removed. His self esteem has grown hugely now he doesn’t have the burden of the tumour. He is now doing so well that he has been able to fly home to Nigeria and join his wife and kids. He was always very involved in our life at ThembaCare and would often be part of our weekly church service. We will miss him greatly but are so happy he is doing so well.

May News

This month we celebrated Mother’s Day and we were very happy to be surprised by a visit from the Ekko club from Pineview primary school who brought us a beautiful flower arrangement to honor us as mothers and to say thank you for the work we do in the community.

You may remember, last month we asked you to pray for one of our inpatients. She is still in a very bad way and battling with TB meningitis as well as HIV. Please continue to stand in prayer with us. She is becoming less and less responsive and we are finding it hard to administer the medication. We fear that only God can intervene now. Please also pray for her two boys who attend clubs run by Village of Hope and must be very worried about their mother. They are currently having pre-trauma counselling and will need to be looked after by their grandmother unless a miracle happens. Thankfully they do have a willing Grandmother and we are helping her to fill out grant forms so she can get some support for childcare. It is a very sad situation but, unfortunately, not an uncommon one here in Grabouw.

April News

This month we would like to ask you to pray for one of our inpatients. She is a patient we have been assisting since we first opened our doors and is currently in because her second line of ARVs (HIV treatment) is failing and she is suffering badly There are only two lines of ARV medication available through the government healthcare system and once a patient has become resistant to those (either by failing to take the medication regularly or by the drugs just not being powerful enough) then they are only offered other treatments in extremely special cases. Without access to effective ARVs this woman, who is only 36 years old and still has small children at home has very little hope.It is a very sad situation.

The syringe drivers that were donated by Dr Niall continue to be a huge blessing. Another patient has been able to use them and we are delighted to say that he has been able to be discharged home with oral morphine.

We have also been very pleased to be able to show lots of new volunteers the community as they have been going out on daily rounds with our outpatient carers. It is good to be able to expose people from different countries and walks of life to the work that we do and the difficult situations so many of our patients have to deal with in their daily lives. We hope that their experiences will enable them to understand about our challenges and share about the positive work we do here in Grabouw for Thembalitsha.