This mother of four is suffering with advanced HIV. Due to the symptoms she is presenting, the hospital staff believe the HIV has developed into full-blown AIDS. Before this can be determined, she needs to have her white-blood-cell count tested with a CD-4 Analyzer -- a piece of laboratory equipment that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thousands of patients in the Luwero districts are praying for this equipment to become available. Right now, it takes several hours to travel to the closest facility that is doing CD-4 testing.
During the recent rains, her house fell down. This is the rubble that is left, two of her boys survey this disaster.
Her neighbors have allowed her and her four children to sleep on the floor of their house. They have just given her the news that she needs to leave, they can not have her stay any longer. As sick as she is, she is still trying to work in the gardens to feed her children and sell a small amount of food to raise some money. But her illness makes this nearly impossible.
This is the external wall of the room where she and her four children sleep.
The only thing that they have to eat is “matoke” -- a type of plantain banana that is made into a mash. It is nutritionally void.
In an interview, she said that she loves her children very much and is so afraid of dying and leaving them with no protection or resources.
The floor on which she is staying with her three children. There is no bed, no blanket, no mosquito nets, no food.
They sleep right next to the owners of the house.
The room that the owners of the house sleep in.
In a culture where the eldest boy is to take care of the family, this older boy has very few resources at his disposal. If their mother dies, they will have no home, no protection, no source of food. Most likely they will become street children who are extremely vulnerable to exploitation.
The rubble of her house. Her two children have no choice but to leave school to work.
Squeezing by to collect water.
A diferent HIV positive mother and baby at dusk in the same village. The baby has just begun to show signs of HIV as indicated in her facial and body rash.
Without even testing this child, the nurses at the Bishop Asili Hospital in Luwero, Uganda know that she is HIV Positive because of the pattern of rash on her body. I have seen this rash many, many times during clinic days.
The father is also suffering from HIV and will most likely die before the mother unless he receives treatment soon. The couple has four other children who will suffer greatly if the parents die.
