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!

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.