Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies - March 20, 2006
Leigh Daynes, south-eastern Zambia
Trained volunteers provide practical help and emotional support to people like Florence in their own homes. With food aid she received from the Red Cross in September, Florence is able to take HIV/AIDS anti-retroviral drugs that are keeping her alive.
The side effects of the medication can be difficult to tolerate, and are often damaging if taken without food. Once treatment has started, medication must be taken without missing doses or resistance will develop and it will no longer work.
"Before I started taking the drugs I was in bed all the time," Florence explains. "I feel much better now. Although I can't carry heavy things. I can do other things and can walk some distance.
"I take two tablets a day, my first at 6am with breakfast and my second at 6pm. I started medication 6 months ago, which is when I went for an HIV test and got a positive diagnosis.
"I am a widow. I have six children: one daughter and five sons. They range in age from 10 to 20 years. My eldest son, Terry, works here at home as a cobbler. He is our main breadwinner. I grow and sell tomatoes from my small garden."
As well as receiving food aid and hygiene items from the Zambia Red Cross, Florence participates in a local support group it helped establish. It enables HIV-positive people to come together to encourage, support and help one another. In Zambia, because of HIV, the life expectancy of a baby born now is just 37.4 years, one of the shortest in the world.
Zambia Red Cross volunteers also visit Patricia Gabi, 35, who is dying from AIDS, to give her and her mother, 68, practical help and emotional support.
Patricia tested positive for HIV three years ago. Three months ago her husband brought her to her 68 year-old mother, Maria, to be cared for. She has not seen him since. He lives five kilometres away.
With little else to eat, Patricia is forced to survive on wild berries and vegetation that has been foraged from the bush, close to her mother's home in the village of Siankwazi, five kilometres from the town of Maamba in south-eastern Zambia.
"Before the drought there was a constant supply of food," Maria says. "We had gardens in which we grew vegetables like cabbages, and tomatoes.
But now because of the drought we're starving. We just want the rain to come because we want to start gardening again. These days the weather is so unreliable."
The Zambia Red Cross plans to scale up food aid to vulnerable people living with HIV ahead of the next harvest in April. The organisation fears that unless action is taken now, a full-blown humanitarian crisis across Southern Africa is likely.
But extra funding is needed. An appeal by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies for Swiss francs 39 million (or US$ 30 million or EUR 25 million) is only 20.9 per cent covered.
In Zambia, if funding allows, the International Federation aims to reach 189,000 people with food aid, agricultural starter packs, cash or vouchers, bore holes and hygiene education.
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