Sr. Patricia Speight

Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa
Kenya

Through the work of the home based programme, there has been a real transformation in the way in which the community supports people living with AIDS. Now there is less isolation, and much more hope about what people can do together.
- Patricia Speight

Patricia Speight is a member of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa, a Congregation established in 1952 specifi cally to provide Sisters who would work in Africa. Sr. Patricia - a qualifi ed nurse and midwife - is originally from Belfast. Over the past eight years she has worked with local people in Nakuru - the fourth largest town in Kenya - to build up a community based response to the challenge of AIDS.

Beginning in July 1998 Sr. Patricia - together with local woman Mrs. Genevive Oloo -spoke with the youth, Christian Communities and Churches in the Nakuru Municipality of Kenya to fi nd out the needs of the people. For the people the clear priority was for a Community Home Based Care programme to be set up for people living with HIV/AIDS. The 'Love and Hope' project was founded to meet this need.

Combating HIV/AIDs and other diseases.
- Millennium Development Goal 6

A key challenge for the programme of 'Love and Hope' - from its beginning - was both to challenge and resource local people in being better able to meet the needs of people with AIDS. Over the years according to Sr. Patricia 'through the work of the home base programme, there has been a real transformation in the way in which the community supports people living with AIDS. Now there is less isolation, and much more hope about what people can do together.'

This success has been helped by the development of a very strong and vibrant AIDS support group. Through the group people get a chance to meet with other people living with AIDS, and to strengthen each other in their efforts to fi ght it. In 2001, having further researched the needs the decision was taken to set up a behaviour change programme as a way of enabling young people to address the problem of AIDS. Today the 'Love and Hope' Project provides a comprehensive range of support services to enable people to address the challenge of AIDs. These include: community home based care, a clinic for Cotrimoxozole Therapy, Aids Education, Behaviour Change programme, teaching family members how to take care of their sick, psychosocial counseling for children/adults, taking care of a small number of orphans and vulnerable children.

In 2004 the Comprehensive Care Unit started at the Rift Valley General Hospital. This Unit provides people living with the Virus with low cost Aniretroviral Treatment and reduced cost laboratory tests. Love and Hope are networking very well with the Hospital and as a result are given all their Base Line Investigations, as well as chest x-rays for their clients. The Love and Hope project pays for the Anti Retroviral Therapy which the Rose project in Ireland has helped to fund.

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