St. Mary's Hospital, July 27, 2005

Hello Blog readers!
Well, it has been almost a week since our return and we still have so much to share from our International Health Experience :)
The last Wednesday we were in Durban, we spent the morning with Sr. Regina at St. Mary's Hospital just outside of Durban. St. Mary's is a 200 bed community hospital which services the Inner/Outer Ethekwini Community (750,000 people!).
One program at St. Mary's is the Ithemba ARV Program which is funded by PEPFAR. The clinic was founded in 2003 as a collaboration between St. Mary's, Harvard University Partners AIDS Research Center and Pangea San Francisco AIDS Foundation.
The Mission of this clinic:

"To give life and improve quality of living to the community we serve by delivering holistic care to patients and families with HIV/AIDS by returning hope and delivering ARV's"

Quite a powerful mission...and Sr. Regina is a phenomenal Nurse! She walked us around the different units of the hospital as well as the outpatient antenatal clinic (I think we all liked this one a lot because of the cute babies there with their mothers for check-ups etc.). Everyone we met was not only welcoming and willing to talk more about what they do, but also quite motivated to work hard because they are making such a difference in the lives of their patients.

It was exciting to talk to one of the research assistants who explained one research study being done to test out ARV's on AIDS-infected infants...the thought is that since the babys' immune systems are immature, perhaps the use of ARV's initially followed by periods of no ARV's may allow the infant's developing immune system to begin to fight off the virus. It is quite hopeful that some of this research may lead to less infants dying from AIDS.

Spending time at St. Mary's, with Sr. Regina, was truly inspiring...to see all the good work being done in the fight against AIDS was hopeful...