For a decade, we have taken leadership where HIV-the virus that causes AIDS, is very common. We have trained local people to stand up to the diseases which were killing their families and friends. Our Health Builders have been out there, encouraging people living with HIV and AIDS along with other common conditions, while offering them on the spot testing, referrals, understanding and prayers. We do this in homes, or create privacy in public spaces to offer this service.

This was a creative venture ten years ago, when nobody else was doing this. We are still the only group in KwaZulu-Natal which is offering broad preventive health training to lay people on location at the point of need. We do this concurrently in five to ten different locations at a time. We do it over months and years.

We were the first to create animations in English and Zulu about HIV testing, treatment and what the disease was like. Nobody was doing this, despite HIV being present in a quarter to a third of people in some areas. When you are the only ones doing something, you eventually have to ask “Where is everybody else?”

We understand that we see differently because we had unique backgrounds in medicine, immunology research and taking health efforts out to people like migrant farm workers in West Michigan. This made us see possibilities where other people didn’t. Critically, we enjoy the ongoing prayers and support of donors over years. Together we are building capacity and long-term solutions to problems which won’t go away. This is mercy in action, built on the skills, work and resources of those who know and love God. As long as there are resourceful people who believe these things, we will be able to continue.

The strategy of testing and treating early has recent support from French national AIDS researcher L. Hocqueloux who tested the response after four years of treatment for HIV. He found that those with high CD4 counts at the beginning of treatment were fifteen (15) times as likely to have a normal CD4 count, CD4:CD8 ratio and low HIV levels in their blood than people who started treatment with a low CD4 count. This means that our training people who can test in the villages are finding people who are more likely to end up with an intact immune system after some years of treatment.

Now that we have paved the way, people are joining us on this journey. Recently representatives of the Health Department and Government invited us to train Traditional Healers in our methods of Health Building.

We thank you again for your enduring support of this work of mercy. We pray you will find blessing in it, as much as we have found blessing in our service.

Rick Gutierrez