By Nasser Kigwangallah
THE social NGO for humanitarian services based in Dar es Salam’s suburb of Mbezi Beach known s ‘Kikundi cha Akina Mama na Watoto’ (WAMATO) is one of the voluntarily NGOs in the country that has embarked upon delivering health services, particularly to those people living with HIV/AIDS of the area.
The group of elderly women of Mbezi Beach organized themselves in 1996 and now it is one of the strongest NGOs in Dar es Salaam that offers humanitarian services to children, who are orphans and whose parents have died of HIV/AIDS.
The group led by Basila Chuwa, her founder chairman; delivers ARVs, food and medical care to more than sixty aids patients, including children, men and women of the area.
Children are being offered school uniforms, food, text books and learning materials to pursue their education at different school levels in Dar es Salaam.
These efforts are commendable and should be complimented by good Samaritans living in Dar es Salaam and all over the country.
WAMATO also started a nursery and primary school in 2000 and at the moment the school has 300 children studying there.
The group also offers meals at the school and this helps most of the children from poor families to get food and this enables them to stay at school by concentrating on their studies.
The school called Bajeziro Nursery and Primary school has educated more than one thousand two hundred children for the last ten years and most of them are in secondary schools and a few have managed to go to the universities.
WAMATO is being funded by a Canadian NGO and it has indicated that it would pull out helping the women’s group, by March next year, therefore putting the group in a dilemma.
“Because of that reason, WAMATO is now facing a dilemma, it does not know how it would continue helping women and children living with HIV/AIDS and also offer humanitarian assistance such as food, medical care and school uniforms to hundreds of orphan students who are getting today,” she says.
She adds by saying that the people she helps are very poor indeed living below poverty line and if the aid is cut off by the Canadian NGO, definitely her group will suffer a lot.
She urges NGOs and other humanitarian groups to come to her rescue to help these children and men and women who re destitute and need to be helped.
Speaking to this reporter, Maria Magdalena (65) says she lives with HIV/AIDS, the pandemic she contracted three years go from her daughter.
She says she gets humanitarian assistance such as medical care, food and ARVs from WAMATO, and her health has improved considerably over the last three years.
Talking about her ordeal and how she got the pandemic, Magdalena revels that he got the disease from her daughter who had HIV?AIDS.
“She was pregnant, and during delivery, I helped her in delivering a baby girl at home and without using protective gears, I got infected with the disease unknowingly,” she says.
She says her daughter, who later died left with her six granddaughters; to care the smallest is three years old who are orphans and all of them get humanitarian assistance from WAMATO.
This has increased a burden of rearing them. Although they are getting humanitarian assistance from WAMATO, it is still worse and they have to work themselves in order to survive.
She says from that year her condition got worse and due to the help she got from WAMATO, her condition is now better and improving.
A site visit to the home of Magdalena has revealed that she is living in a very bad condition and her granddaughters re indulged in child labour by doing meager jobs in order to survive.
Without being helped, they would suffer immensely. ………………………………………………………………………………………
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