Success Stories

“I was always sick and tired. I could barely do anything,” Laurinda Emiliano tells us during an interview. Laurinda, 19, lives in the Bairro Cimento within the village of Zalala, Quelimane District, Zambézia Province. Starting in 2014, Laurinda mysteriously began to get sick frequently. “I started getting sick and I did not know what I had. Since the illness would not go away, I started visiting traditional healers.” The young woman sought out the cause for her illness for more than three years, but her health was only getting worse.

The Impact of Community-Based Information, Education and Communication Initiatives and Importance of Community Adherence Support Groups  Abudo Nicuacua was diagnosed with HIV in 2006. Today, Abudo is an antiretroviral treatment (ART) adherence role model, but this was not always the case. Although he began ART shortly after his diagnosis, he was not convinced that the medications would improve his health. He quickly abandoned care and stopped taking his ART soon after enrollment.

Sangariveira Secondary School (SSS) was established in 2012 in Quelimane, Zambézia Province. Currently, the school has 4,980 students, 2,610 male and 2,370 female, who are divided into 42 groups, with morning, afternoon and night student rotations. Located in the outskirts of Quelimane, SSS has a gloomy past. It was infamous for high levels of drug use, early and unwanted pregnancies, prostitution, and illness. 

Farias Fernando Romane recently moved from the Coalane neighborhood to Canecos, within Quelimane District. The move meant that he also changed the health facility where he receives HIV care. When our team met him, it was only his second visit to 24 de Julho Health Center. He was already pleased with the quality of care he has been receiving.

Ducha António was first diagnosed with HIV in 2008, during an antenatal consultation. She was just sixteen years old and did not fully understand what HIV was or the impact it could have on her life. She refused treatment for herself, and she was also reluctant to have her infant daughter tested. “I was a teenager with little knowledge of things, so I just ignored treatment.”

By Rui Esmael Dreams Can Come True: Over a decade on combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) with two HIV-uninfected daughters

Last year, the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH) and Friends in Global Health (FGH) worked together to collect a container full of donated medical supplies and had it shipped to the Provincial Health Department located in the Zambézia Province of Mozambique. In October 2016, the container arrived in the port of Quelimane. Together with Project C.U.R.E.

In the rich farmlands of Birua Village, in Furquia Locality, Namacurra District, Zambézia Province, lives 52 year old Paulina Raposo. She has been a traditional birth attendant for 36 years. “I learned to be a traditional birth attendant at the hospital in Macuse [in Zambézia] in 1980. It was war time and there was a need for people who were prepared to help in the communities. I was one of the chosen ones,” she told us. Feligência José and her daughter Dilma.

</a> This video was produced by Rui Esmael. Amélia Sebastião and her seven year old daughter, Juliana, are healthy and making long-term plans for their lives. Amélia is a Peer Educator assisting patients in her community and Juliana wants to be a District Administrator when she grows up. But this was not the case just a few years ago.