Background

Ingwavuma Orphan Care is non profit organisation that supports professional provision of orphan and vulnerable care including physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual and economic support to patients with diseases and vulnerable communities to reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS/TB and poverty in the Umkhanyekude District. The organisation enables these communities to access services and develop vulnerable people to sustain themselves and to exercise their basic rights and leaves them in a state where they are socially responsible and independent. The organisation helps all those who it can and its operations are underpinned by Christian values.

Our history

Ingwavuma Orphan Care is a charity which was started in June 2000 by Dr Ann Dean (nee Barnard). She was working as a doctor in Mosvold Hospital in Ingwavuma and saw that orphans were coming into the wards with malnutrition and at times were just abandoned there for months. She formed a management committee made up of representatives from the Departments of Health, Welfare and Agriculture. The first staff member was employed in September 2000. The organisation has grown tremendously over the years to 240 staff, most of whom are drawn from the community it serves and including several young people who were previously orphan beneficiaries and have now finished school.

The town of Ingwavuma is situated high in the Lebombo mountains in Northern KwaZulu Natal, bordering on the East side of Swaziland. The town has one main road with the Hospital, Shopping Centre and Women's Centre on the first hill and the Post Office, prison, Welfare Department, Home Affairs, Magistrate's Court on the second hill. Houses and homesteads are scattered over the hillside, so it is hard to say where the town starts and finishes.

However, Ingwavuma Orphan Care does not just work in the town, but spreads its services over the 3 surrounding tribal areas which cover about 2100km2. Some of its services are extended beyond these areas; the HCBC programme covering all of Jozini District, while sub-grants are given to partners who provide services to orphans and vulnerable children in the Manguzi and Mseleni areas along the coast.

HIV and AIDS

One can quote many statistics about HIV and AIDS to shock onlookers, but what does it actually mean for those of us who live in the epidemic? Everybody knows somebody or many people who have died young - there is still quite a bit of stigma around so people will not often openly say that they died of AIDS. AIDS infects all classes of society from the richest to the poorest. Sometimes even those educated in western medicine may first turn to traditional healers rather than face the truth about their diagnosis and die rather than admit they need ARVs. However more and more people are now getting onto antiretroviral drugs and some hope is returning.

Most people go to funerals on Saturdays. If there is a funeral in the neighborhood, one is not allowed to carry on with work e.g. building, gardening until the funeral is over. If families can afford it, they spend a lot of money on funerals and this partly because of the belief in ancestors looking over the family and the need to respect them. However, it leaves less money for those left behind and many end up in debt. As a result, most relatives are buried in the homestead rather than at a cemetery and it is not uncommon to see 5 or more graves in the yard.

The youngest children of parents who are dying of AIDS often get neglected emotionally and physically as the focus is on caring for their parents. Some of them are positive themselves and die around the same time that their parents do. The damage of a lost generation to the next generation is incalculable and its effects are not yet fully met.

Anti-retroviral therapy

• Antiretroviral treatment (ARV) is available through the government hospital for free. However it is only reaching a proportion of the people who need it as many are too sick or poor to travel to the clinics for treatment.
• While we have seen many cases of bed-ridden patients coming back to life on ARVs, there is still suspicion in the community about whether they are safe as a small percentage of people do die of side effects or many die because they started treatment too late.
• Those who are sick enough to qualify for ARVs are also able to get a disability grant. This is often used to provide food for the whole family. When the person starts to recover from AIDS, the grant is stopped and the patient and family return to hunger and poverty. People at support groups debate whether they should default treatment in order to get the grant again. This is a serious concern as it could lead to the drugs becoming ineffective.
• Foster care grants for orphans sometimes turn these children into a commodity with relatives fighting for custody so that they can get the grant. A grant for one child is a lot more than many families have to live off- it is poverty and desperation rather than greed that leads to this situation. Non-orphaned children or those with one parent are not entitled to this grant even though they may be even worse of economically.