This is how we fund our projects:
Anti Retroviral Medication (ARVs):
Always our #1 funding priority. We fund a percentage of ARV treatments - including 2nd and 3rd line regimens - in many of our projects, though today they are mainly government programme provided.HIV-related Medical Care: 2nd tier funding.
Medical support for HIV-related issues, including medicines for opportunistic infections - like Amphotericin B for Cryptococcal Meningitis - HIV tests, viral load tests and genotype testing.ARV Efficacy & Adherence: 3rd tier funding.
This is support to ensure our beneficiaries receive their ARVs and that they work properly. It can include nutritional support packages, clinic travel support, community social workers and HIV counselling.
Medical Action Myanmar (MAM)
Yangon, Myanmar
4,000 HIV patients cared for
Medical Action Myanmar (MAM) is a medical aid organisation based in Yangon, whose mission it is to improve access to healthcare for the poorest parts of Myanmar. Doctors here take care of 4,000 HIV patients, 500 of them children, with 50-60 consultations per day in the main clinic.
AidsArk is a long term supporter
AidsArk was one of the first supporters of MAM, originally helping to supply ARVs when none were available to tens of thousands of people with HIV, many of them sick and dying. We continue to support people living with HIV with medical care, medicines, social support and counselling.
Dr Frank Smithuis & Dr Nini Tun
MAM was founded and is managed by Dr Frank Smithuis, with Dr Nini Tun as Medical Director: “With the support of AidsArk we are able to save the lives of many young adults and children with treatment and ongoing care so that they can live a normal life and are not infectious to their partners.”
Mae Tao Clinic
Mae Sot Thailand, on the Thai/Myanmar border
Challenges of the Thai/Myanmar Border
Over 150,000 Myanmar migrants live across the border in Thailand, without access to Thai medical care. Many of these people are highly mobile and transient, as they look for work where they can find it. As a result providing stable medical care for the many HIV patients among them is a challenge, which is why we support the Mae Tao Clinic’s work.
HIV care where it’s needed
AidsArk funds over 4,500 HIV tests, which enables newly diagnosed patients to enrol on government ARV treatment across the border. We also support ongoing medical care for the HIV community.
Dr Cynthia Maung
The Mae Tao Clinic, known locally as Dr. Cynthia’s clinic after founder Dr. Cynthia Maung, has been serving the Myanmar refugee population in Mae Sot, Western Thailand, around 500 km northwest of Bangkok. since 1989. Dr Cynthia was listed as one of 2003 Time Magazine’s Asian Heroes, and has received six international awards for her work.
Roussey Hospital
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Ampho B is a life-saving drug
Amphotericin B is the life-saving anti-fungal treatment that clears Cryptococcal Meningitis - a life-threatening opportunistic infection - and one that can occur when people with HIV have a compromised immune system and low CD4 count. AidsArk supplies Ampho-B to Roussey Hospital.
Dr Narom
AidsArk connected with Dr Narom at Roussey Hospital (officially the Khmer Soviet Friendship Hospital) in Phnom Penh in 2015, through an NGO contact who was made aware of HIV patients there dying from Cryptococcal Meningitis. We have been working with him since and visited three times.
Warrenton
near Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa
Providing HIV testing and social care
AidsArk funds HIV testing, so that the team can identify new patients quickly and prevent further infection. We also fund two social workers whose role is to identify vulnerable patients who cannot take care of themselves. They facilitate clinic visits and ensure patients receive and take their ARVs.
One of South Africa’s poorest communities
The project is located in an extremely poor rural area in the Northern Cape, where unemployment is crippling and the majority of families are living way below the breadline. Most people live in corrugated iron shacks in dusty townships, where the temperature tops 40C+ in the summer.
Sister Ellen Curran
Sister Ellen Curran leads the Frances Shannon project in Warrenton, which falls under the umbrella of Nazareth House. The project has been operating for the past ten years, one of its primary goals is to improve healthcare access for people living with HIV in a very rural, remote and destitute area.
Baphumelele Hospice
Khayelitsha Township, outside Cape Town, South Africa
Sometimes there is no-one else to help
The team at Baphumelele helped us understand that in a big township like Khayelistha, home to over 1 million people living close to the breadline, the availability of ARVs and HIV medical support doesn’t matter if there's nobody to help sick, suffering people. This is where we’ve identified the best way we can help to save lives.
Helping families keep HIV healthy
Family life in a township like Khayelitsha is challenging without HIV. So in families where mothers, fathers and children are HIV+, having support to ensure parents and children make their clinic appointments and keep taking their ARVs on schedule can be the difference between a family that keeps it together and one that disintegrates.
Our Community Social Care Workers
AidsArk funds two social care nurses working for Baphumelele Hospice in the Home. They go out into the township community and find people with HIV who have fallen through the cracks. They support them in getting to clinics, getting ARVs and taking them. Follow-up is key, and being known and respected in the community - which they are - is essential too.
FXB Vizag
Vizag, or Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India
Families that were dying are now healthy.
AidsArk started providing ARVs to Vizag in 2005, when many adults, couples, children and families were sick or dying from AIDS. When we visit now it’s incredible and wonderful to see how people who were at death’s door are now living healthy lives where HIV is not limiting them in any way.
Providing testing and medicines
AidsArk principally provides viral load testing in Vizag, together with medical support for 2nd and 3rd line ARVs and opportunistic infections. Dr Raju continues to work to keep this group of people healthy, and AidsArk continues to support him to do that.
Dr Raju
AidsArk has worked with Dr Raju since 2005, providing support to his cohort of 100 families in Vizag where he led a comprehensive HIV programme when ARVs were still unavailable. Today we continue to support him with medical care.
Dhammayietra
Mongkol Borei near Seam Riep Cambodia
Remoteness is an HIV challenge
Mongkol Borei is a rural and remote region of Cambodia, where villages are widespread and one small local hospital supports a huge geographical area. It can take a full day for a person living with HIV to travel to the hospital for a check-up and to receive their ARV treatment. Given the trade-offs, a clinic visit will sometimes be skipped in favour of going to work work or taking care of children.
Where a bus fare can save a life
Understanding the challenges of the people living with HIV in the area, we realised the single biggest way we could help was to provide the funding to help patients get to the clinics to receive their ARV treatments and check-ups. This is the single biggest factor limiting drug adherence and patient loss to follow-up.
The Dhammayietra Team
We learnt about Dhammayietra and their work through an NGO colleague in Phnom Penh, and visited 2.5 hours from Siem Reap to understand more. This social care organisation with multiple worthwhile programmes does a great job in ensuring the HIV community is supported beyond what the local hospital has the capacity to do.
