For 30 years, EDARP, a program started by Maryknoll Father Edward Phillips, has been offering community-based programs accompanying people with HIV/AIDS in Kenya.
Alice Njoroge, the managing director of the Eastern Deanery AIDS Relief Program, talks about the program, its success and the role of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers during the last three decades. Njoroge spoke with Maryknoll’s Adam Mitchell in Nairobi. This transcript has been edited for clarity and space.
I ‘ve been in EDARP for the last 30 years. We started the program with Father Ed Phillips in 1993. Then we were offering community-based programs, just accompanying people who were ill with HIV/AIDS when there was a lot of stigma in the village, in the community. … It was a time when our hospitals were really full, and patients with AIDS would be sent home to die. So we had to teach the people of the communities how to accompany and take care of them. A lot of patients were abandoned even by their own relatives.
There was a felt need to really accompany and work with these patients and also model to the community, teach them that you cannot get AIDS by touch. You cannot get AIDS by being close to the patients. With time, we trained small groups of volunteers from the Small Christian Communities on how to give basic home-based care and to be there for the patients.
This had a lot of impact because through the volunteers being seen by neighbors going into the homes of people they feared, other people started getting involved with the patients. They would no longer see them as people not to be touched, but they started having a bit of compassion for them. We cannot say today that we are completely rid of the stigma, but it’s not as bad as it was in the 1990s.
Along the way tuberculosis became a huge problem. We had to look for a way of dealing with the number of patients with TB because they were increasing by double the numbers that we were used to. We approached the Ministry of Health and asked [the head of the TB section] to help us to establish a small laboratory within the community so that we could take care of the patients with TB. It was not easy, but God touched him and he responded to our call.
From a small laboratory in one parish, we have grown to seven. The major one, we are proud of saying, is state of the art. We have increased our number of community healthcare workers since 1993. We have 1,012 community healthcare workers and they’re all active.
The kind of patient we see in EDARP is not the average patient seen in other hospitals. A lot of these patients have given up on themselves. By the time they come to us they have multiple issues.
Some of them are very poor. They don’t have a job. They survive on a daily wage. Others are criminals. Others are drug peddlers. Others are sex workers. We see everybody. We have street people and a lot of street children, a lot of street families and we are taking care of them. Those are our clients and they have special needs.
We don’t only give them medication. This program has grown and developed based on what people need. If we see a patient, and that patient does not have food, we are not going to give them medication and tell them go and look for food. We are going to address the issue of hunger because we know that without food, they will not be able to take their medication.
If they’re an alcoholic, we have interventions that address alcohol and drug addictions within the program. We are not going to be blind to that part of their lives. EDARP does not focus on one thing. We are holistic. We take care of the patient in totality. Whatever issues that come, we are with them.
Now in the current economic situation, number one is funding. The money is getting less and less. In terms of looking at 30,000 patients, the number is not growing any smaller. We grow our patients on an average of about 1,000 patients every year.
Then there is the spiritual aspect, which Father Rick Bauer really brought into the program. Now we have integrated spiritual screening. Previously we would do it, but not at that scale. There are churches all over and a lot of those pastors are praying for people with HIV and telling them they are healed. And they stop taking their medication. We are able to address those issues from the screening.
We work with our patients to help them, so that they understand that, yes, your spiritual values are very important, but also your care and treatment is equally important. We have to strike a balance so that you continue to believe in God, but at the same time, take your medication. Other patients go to medicine men and we are also able to catch those and work with them. Of course, those who become victims of the medicine men come back and they are our ambassadors: “Take your medication.”
When I joined this program, my faith and my religious beliefs were not where they are today. The people who have made my faith grow are the community healthcare workers. Those are the people who are the living example of the Gospel of Jesus. They go out, they give themselves, and they teach even though they are not professionals or highly educated. They don’t have much, but they are very happy to serve God through serving other human beings.
Our people have learned from these community healthcare workers to see Jesus in the patients that they serve. To me, that is the greatest prayer that is answered every day in EDARP. We all come from different denominations, but this is one thing, one identity we have in common, that people identify with the patients as if they were their own brothers, their own mothers, their own sisters. That is where we are today with EDARP.
Featured Image: EDARP Managing Director Alice Njoroge (in colorful blouse) and staff (from left) Site Manager Caroline Karimi, Deputy Site Manager Elizabeth Chege and Clinical Manager Ivone Wafula are shown at the Mathare Clinic.
