Guelph-based physician Dr. Anne-Marie Zajdlik, a long-time HIV/AIDS awareness advocate, has one remaining goal – to open a treatment clinic in rural Lesotho in Africa.
“I want to build a clinic in a more rural area where there is no service and start building other clinics in rural areas that don’t have access to the district hospital so this is clinic number two that we’re trying to build,” she said.
Zajdlik began her organization, Bracelet of Hope, 10 years ago and is planning to use a recent award to help her build the rural clinic.
On June 23, the Rockwood-area resident received the Meritorious Service Medal from Governor General of Canada David Johnston in Ottawa.
“For me the award has given me permission to really push my last goal,” Zajdlik said. “So I really want to see the next clinic built in Lesotho, I’m going to use the press from this and the credentials from this to knock on doors to get that done.”
She said that while it was great to be in Ottawa, meet the Governor General and meet the other award winners the real advantage of receiving provincial and national awards is to have the opportunity to, “use it to promote your cause and … use it to make sure the image of your organization is out there the way you want your image to be out there.”
Zajdlik’s work with Lesotho began in 2006 when she launched Bracelet of Hope to raise $1 million to contribute to the first HIV/AIDS clinic in the country. She was working with the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA).
“All the funds raised by Guelph kept 11,000 people alive at the clinic in Lesotho for 2009,” she said. “I think that’s my favourite achievement in all this – is to know that one community was willing to do that for so many other people.”
The OHA chose Lesotho because Stephen Lewis, then the UN secretary general for HIV/AIDS in Africa, suggested it would be a good place to build a clinic. Approximately 25% of the Lesotho population is HIV positive.
“It’s geographically isolated and it’s been at peace for well over 50 years, it’s a low risk country to go to with a similar culture to ours so the culture shock and safety factor is the reason why they choose Lesotho,” Zajdlik.
After five years the OHA-built and -supported clinic was turned over to the government of Lesotho and it became government funded.
In 2010 Zajdlik made the decision to keep her organization running in Lesotho with the goal of building more clinics.
“So we have spent the last 10 years building very solid relationships with other people in Lesotho and building other entities – foster homes, income generation activities and the team that I have is committed,” she said. “So we will stick by the clinic that we build for as long as we have to make sure it continues to run.”
However, the plan is to pass it over to the government after five years of operation.
“The government has the ability to flow international funds into that clinic so that you’re just a supervisory role, you’re not fundraising anymore for it, so then you can take your fundraising efforts onto the next clinic but you don’t keep your eye off the clinic that you’ve already built,” Zajdlik said.
The first clinic has now been combined with the outpatient department of the district hospital in Lesotho. But Zajdlik said rural clinics are important so that the entire population can have easy access to the AIDS medication.
“In Lesotho the medications are available but only in the urban centres so if you live close to a clinic and you can get yourself there and there is a doctor available who can see you in a timely fashion and you’re early on in the condition and not sick yet than you can receive the medication for free, take it, go home and hopefully live a normal life expectancy,” she explained. “But you need to eat well, you need to be healthy, you need to have the right support systems to take medication every day.”
However, because the disease is still stigmatized those who are HIV positive in rural areas don’t often voluntarily trek into the urban centre for treatment, Zajdlik said.
“If you live in a rural area of Lesotho and you have HIV and you know it because … you’ve seen it happen to others and you see the symptoms evolving in you, you may decide never to receive treatment,” she said. “I saw a lot of people who decided, ‘I’m just going to die of this disease because I don’t want to be stigmatized, I can’t get to the clinic anyway, it’s too far, I don’t have the money to be transported back and forth at regular intervals, the clinic is sometimes open and sometimes not, and when I get there I have to wait in line and may have to take eight hours off in order to be seen.’”
She said they choose to die because it seems like too much work to get proper care.
“If you can put a local clinic in their village or a satellite clinic from a rural clinic … and all they have to do is on their way to work (stop in) and get the pills … no one ever needs to know they’re on the medication and then once you have someone on treatment it’s effective, they can’t transmit – a lot of people don’t understand that now about HIV,” she said. “When you’re on good treatment you can’t transmit so the rest of the community remains healthy.”
However, the new wellness clinic will not have doctors.
“We’ll use prescribers so it can be nurse practitioners or nurses and they’ll be hired locally,” Zajdlik said.
“So one of the rules for the clinic is I will not pay doctors from the first world, the developed world, to work at the clinic, if they want to come and volunteer they can, paid employees will only be local employees.
“That’s another way to make it sustainable.”
Zajdlik predicted that the world is about five years out from a cure for AIDS and when that happens it’s imperative that the infrastructure be in place for smooth distribution.
“There’s going to be huge incentive to get people in the third world on the same powerful medications we have access to (in Canada)” she said.
“So that they’re healthy enough when that cure comes through and then make sure the infrastructure’s in place so that the cure can get to patients as well.”
The idea behind Bracelet of Hope’s new clinic is that it will be replicable.
“(I’ve got) to stay focused on this one goal … to create a treatment structure that’s very effective, replicated in the county,” she said. “If as we’re replicating it there are other countries that want to replicate it as well, great.”
To donate to Bracelet of Hope visit http://www.braceletofhope.ca/.
