FATHER GIOVANNIS DANISH SUPPORTGROUP

In the majority of the areas of Thailand, people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) suffer from discrimination, as well as being stigmatized and marginalized. To won up to being a PLWHA is to leave yourself open to losing your job, being ostracized from your family and being banished from the village. In late 1995, the Camillian Social Centre (CSC) in Rayong began providing shelter and care to homeless, indigent, and rejected people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA).

Since its beginnings to March 2003, the CSC has touched the lives of 667 people, 367 of these have died of complications due to AIDS and 213 have been given the opportunity to return to the community and live a full life.

In palliative care the aim is to minimize the impact of the progressing illness so that the patient can live life to the fullest. Death is neither hastened nor postponed, life is affirmed and dying is regarded as a normal process. The CSC provides care to PLWHA who are in the terminal stage of AIDS. The Center has a full-time nurse on staff and once a week, with the assistance of the "Doctors without Borders", a nurse visits the children. The residents living with HIV/AIDS are proveded with excellent quality medical care.

The goal of the prevention program is to empower individuals, families and communities on how to prevent HIV/AIDS and to increase the capacity of everyone to find solutions to the HIV/AIDS problems that will lead to a better quality of life.

The core prevention activities are (a) a learning process on HIV/AIDS prevention. (b) the implementation of an action plan on prevention by young people (workers, employees, students) and (c) the organisation of young people in a network to disseminate the information on HIV/AIDS.

Since January and March 2003, eleven groups with a total of 555 people have come to the Centre for training in the prevention of HIV/AIDS. The groups came from factories, the neighbouring communities and schools. The Fountain of Life in Pattaya continues to send one or two groups per month for our one-day training sessions. We also had 12 groups come for
information visits.

The prevention staff made fifteen follow-up visits to factories, schools and the neighbouring communities. Preliminary contacts were made with eight schools, nine factories and 21 community groups - of these contacts, nine groups have committed to attend the training at some future date and 12 groups will have an exposure visit.

PLEASE SUPPORT BY MAKING A DONATION DIRECTLY TO:

ST. CAMILLUS FOUNDATION
BANK OF AYUDHYA
MAP-TA-PHUT BRANCH
POSTAL CODE 21150
RAYONG - THAILAND
ACCOUNT NR. 229-1-29336-3

You are also welcome to make donations  by sending personal checks  or bank checks directly to the center's address

previous page

Top of this page         Home          Send E-mail            Danish Version