10th June 2005, Issue 4

Running total £154 per month sponsoring 143 families. . . .
Dear Sponsors,

Welcome to the 4th Harambee newsletter. Since the launch of Harambee in January 2003, you have now donated between you over £3,000 to make healthcare affordable for 143 families in Eastern Kenya. Our families hold special cards that entitle them to a 50% discount at five local clinics. Income has risen, but so has expenditure. Since our last newsletter in September 2004, we have registered a further 35 families, but careful accountancy and recruitment of more sponsors means that income still has the upper hand.

		New addition: our largest registered family to date, Musili Kithome, consists of four adults and fourteen children. They earn their living off the land as subsistence farmers. Within days of receiving their new Harambee card in April 2005, they used it for children’s immunisations at Gai clinic, halving their bill of 30 Kenyan shillings – that’s just 21 pence.

April visit
In April 2005 I visited the Mivukoni area for two weeks, along with fellow Akamba Aid Fund workers Denis Cannon, Kenneth Robertson and Tony Perry. We were able to return to 22 of our sponsored families. The vast majority had experienced greatly improved access to healthcare. Some had minor problems: Ngondo Munyithya had lost his family’s card, so we issued him with a new one and cancelled the old. Some families had sad stories to tell. Baby Musyoki lost his mother Kalimi to AIDS, and is now cared for by his grandparents, whom we were able to register for Harambee sponsorship in Kalimi’s place. Many Harambee families are affected by HIV. Three members of the Mwinzi family, featured in our last newsletter, tested positive for HIV during our stay, and the status of the youngest baby will not be known until she has reached 18 months of age. Gai clinic is launching an awareness campaign in the region, which is neglected by most education programmes, since most Kenyans believe HIV is an issue for urban areas only. However, with so many Akamba men leaving their families to work for months on end, and then returning, prevalence is reaching 25%...PAGE2>>>