Eunice Achieng makes her mark!
Eunice Achieng has devoted her life to helping people infected with HIV/AIDS, recognizing their struggles not only with the disease, but just to access health care.
In her community of Lira, Uganda, HIV/AIDS has had a shattering effect, making widows out of wives and orphaned children out of families. For those still battling with the disease, many are too weak to cope with raising a family single-handedly, to earn a living, or pay for their children's schooling. Achieng has been working as a nurse for Diocese of Lango (a CAP/AIDS core partner), trying to better the lives of her patients. But while the health centre's rural location provided key services to an area far from a town or city hospital, it was still too difficult to reach for many, especially those physically weary from HIV/AIDS. Achieng's work was challenging, since patients would often be unreachable.
The provision of a bicycle immediately increased the effectiveness of her work. As a part of the Bike Distribution program, CAP/AIDS gave Achieng a bicycle to widen her support network. Now she can deliver immunization and counselling to more patients, check up on those who have been bed-ridden by HIV/AIDS, transport people to the health centre, and test men for HIV/AIDS who would normally be too reluctant to be tested in public. She says that now 'when you gave us the bicycle, … it was even very easy for us to go for outreach.'
The power of two wheels underneath her has enabled Achieng to go just about anywhere – with her HIV immunization kit, and with her dreams. Now she can envision her health centre becoming a hospital, providing all of the needed services to truly fight HIV/AIDS.