HIV, AIDS, TB & Malaria
ICAN is responding to one of the worst tragedies to strike Africa; AIDS. Africa has over 70% of the world's HIV cases and Kenya has over 1.4 million of the world's 34 million people living with the virus.
TB is rising dramatically and more people died last year of malaria in Africa than HIV/AIDS. These three killer diseases are central to our public health prevention programmes.
Home Based Care
We are preventing new infections through education, training and safe management of AIDS infected children. We are protecting their families from infection and are reaching out to more and more people living with AIDS.
Our home care programmes provide nutritional and medical support to the poorest of the poor. They allow people to die with dignity in their own homes instead of in hospitals where there are often three patients to one bed. Home care reduces the risk of secondary infections to vulnerable children and carers, and our successes have been copied in other home care programmes. This project provides the most basic human needs, support, counselling and essentials to people who desperately need your help.
Orphans & Vulnerable Children
There are over 900,000 AIDS orphans in Kenya and many more children orphaned from other diseases. Every day, 700 adults of reproductive age die in Kenya, leaving behind an increasing number of children. The crisis is rapidly worsening across all of Africa. We continue to address this problem by implementing studies to measure the needs of these children. Our alliance programmes are reaching 45,000 orphans and vulnerable children providing care, support, education, nutrition and medical care. Many of these children are sick themselves and require a lot of love and support.
We are working with children in many different set ups (extended family care, foster and adaptation, village type institutions and orphanages). We are helping these children integrate into communities and we will scale up these programmes to meet the growing need in project areas. With your help we will be able to ensure the futures of thousands of these children. Not all vulnerable children are orphaned, many are severely malnourished, and many go to bed hungry every night. We need your support to change the poverty trap that drags these children into further illness and disease.
Voluntary Counselling
The most important thing in fighting AIDS is prevention, education, empowering people and encouraging safe sex. At the centre of our AIDS prevention is a peer based awareness programme backed up by voluntary counselling and testing.
Together with our partners we are setting up voluntary counselling and testing facility to create an infrastructure and support system that will greatly reduce new infections and protect a younger generation. It will also provide effective counselling, support and help those infected by HIV and share knowledge and awareness. We hope to open a voluntary counselling and testing programme which will reach the people who so desperately need it. To reach this goal we need your support.
Malaria Control
3,000 people die from malaria a day. They die because they lack access to health care, life saving drugs and bed-nets. Every year there are over 300,000,000 cases of malaria (10 new cases every second). Malaria is on the rise. Malaria is responsible for one out of four childhood deaths. With our partners, we have implemented a comprehensive malaria prevention and control programme in five districts. In 2005-2009 we hope to cut malaria cases by 40% among the people we work with. With your help we can cut malaria deaths in half.
Ways of preventing malaria include insecticide treated bed-nets and simply reducing the number of mosquitoes by spraying breeding grounds and cutting grass around huts and homesteads. Moreover, safe pregnancy is ensured by providing anti malaria tablets to pregnant women.