A vegetable garden for those living with HIV/AID

AIDS is one of the major problems in Namibia as well as in the rest of Africa, Nyangana Catholic Hospital situated 100km north of Rundu provides retroviral medication to over 200 people living with AIDS. The majority of those infected with the virus are very poor and hence cannot afford to eat healthy food, which is instead necessary if the medication is to work and if one want to diminish the risk of opportunistic infections.

For this reason the hospital has provided 3 hectares of land to those affected with AIDS so that they could cultivate it and get food for themselves and even to initiate some income generating activities with the goods which were not used for self consumption. However, the land given did not have a proper watering system which made difficult for the “farmers” to produce the products they needed. The outreach programme has come to the rescue of this initiative by providing them with the water infrastructure they needed. With the funds collected via the outreach programme by one of the ERTS tour guides, Rolando, first of all it has been possible to providing those working in the project with a pump and at the same time it has been laid down a proper watering system, subsequently it has also been possible to provide them with both tools and seeds for the garden

Kehemu Tuzeni Komeho