Think twice before you throw away or delete that photo from your album; you never know when it might be of help at some point just like it happened to me. My organsation Action Africa Help International has been struggling to establish an Anti-retoviral therapy (ART) clinic in Kyangwali Refugee Settlement to increase access to Anti-retoviral (ARV) drugs for people living with HIV/AIDS. Efforts to have one of the health units in the settlement approved by Ministry of Health as an ART center (implying free access to ARVs from government) had not been successful.
I thought of how we could turn the situation around. As I was looking through some photos I had taken earlier, I came across one we took with the Star Key foundation staff with our hands together as a sign of togetherness in partnership. It made me think of creating partnerships to establish an ART clinic in the settlement. Indeed this worked.
With the health facility to situate the clinic and health workers available, all we needed were the ARVs, CD4 testing and refresher training of the health workers. I brainstormed stormed possible partners: I identified a government health center near the settlement which agreed to provide the ARVs and CD4 testing to the clinic as an outreach program, and the American Refugee Committee agreed to train our health workers as part of their routine trainings. Management bought the idea and today, we have an ART clinic in the settlement serving close to 1500 people living with HIV/AIDS. When I looked back at how I came up with this initiative, I really appreciated the power of photography.