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Under the Mupundu Tree

Volunteers in home care for people with HIV/AIDS and TB in Zambia's Copperbelt.

68 pages; published 1999; ISBN 1 872502 53 9

Zambia, like most other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, now faces the daunting challenge of addressing the needs of huge numbers of people affected by this dual epidemic. Their needs are not only for medical and nursing care, but also for material, social, psychological and spiritual support.

The book describes an innovative home care programme in 23 low-income townships in Zambia’s Copperbelt. Coordinated by Ndola Catholic Diocese, the programme has achieved high coverage, at reasonable cost, and has successfully integrated TB control into home care for people with HIV/AIDS and their families.

Over 500 volunteers - most of whom are women - are the key to the success of the programme. This book depicts their day-to-day activities, explores their motivation and examines how they cope with the problems they face.

Under the Mupundu Tree will be extremely useful to health and development workers in many countries - not only in sub-Saharan Africa - where volunteers are a potentially precious asset in community-based efforts to cope with the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS and TB.

“One of the strengths of the Strategies for Hope series is the inclusion of personal stories of people involved in AIDS work, which in this case illustrate how caring people can be ... Especially admirable is that some of the volunteers are HIV-positive themselves. It is hard to comprehend how people in this position can face AIDS patients every day, knowing that they face falling ill themselves.”
AIDS Analysis Africa, Vol. 9, No. 5, Feb/Mar 1999

The book can be used in conjunction with the accompanying video 'Under the Mupundu Tree'.

To order please click here

Under the Mupundu Tree

This book is also available in French. For further information please click here.