How Mildmay International has made a difference to the
HIV/AIDS crisis in Uganda - and how Samaritan’s Purse is now
coming alongside to help!

You are a young teenager, your parents are dead, you’ve got younger brothers and sisters dependent on you … and you’ve got AIDS.

A nightmare scenario? Yes - and it is just daily life for hundreds of youngsters throughout Africa in 2005. But now hundreds and soon thousands of HIV/AIDS infected children and young people in Uganda will be helped through an exciting new venture between Samaritan’s Purse and Mildmay International.

Children like Rose who at 14 years is heading her household. She
looks after a sister of 12, and brothers of 9 and 5 years. The 5 year old is sick and has been found to be HIV positive. Their mud and wattle house is in a state of disrepair – the roof is leaking and the door is not secure. For that reason they have to leave the house at night to go to an uncle’s house, as village boys are chasing the two girls.

These youngsters are part of the 150,000 in Uganda who are known to be living with AIDS. The estimates are much, much greater. These children need care, medical help and counselling.

They are also part of the thousands of children whom Mildmay International’s clinics, hospital and day-care centres have been helping
over the past 7 years.

From modest beginnings on Naziba Hill, near Kampala, in 1998, Mildmay’s care for people living with HIV/AIDS has expanded from adult and children’s out-patients’ clinics and a Study Centre (The Mildmay Centre) to specialised services for children (Mildmay Jajja’s Home Children’s Programmes) – in the form of day-care (rural and urban), and a small specialised hospital and training unit.

But the full story of Jajja’s Home did not begin in Uganda. It really began years ago, in Southend on Sea, Essex. There a young girl from a miserable, adopted home, became a Christian at 14, and at 18 decided to train as a nurse at Mildmay Mission Hospital in the East End of London.

Her name was Ruth Sims, and though her real father was a consultant physician, her adopted family was barely literate, and very abusive. Ruth had grown up knowing fear and isolation. Only her Christian faith, found at a Baptist Church when she was 14, had helped her stand up to her oppressors, and decide to train to help others. At Mildmay Ruth felt a call to go to Africa, but then her family fell ill, and the opportunity passed. Instead, she married, and went into nursing. She then retrained as a teacher and became deputy head of a special needs school, before combining the two careers by going into nurse management. In due course she was appointed Director of Community Nursing Services for Southendon- Sea Health Authority.

Life took an unexpected and tragic turn for Ruth herself when in her late 40s, her marriage broke down.The separation from her husband and four children affected her deeply. For 18 months she distanced herself from God and the church as she suffered depression, grief, and guilt at the failure of the marriage. She struggled to make sense of the difficult decisions she had been forced to make.

“Then gradually, God began to speak to me, and I felt I had to attempt to find a new church to attend.” Ruth visited Shoeburyness and Thorpe Bay Baptist Church, and was encouraged by the warm welcome and kindness shown to her. Ruth then began to communicate with God
again. “Slowly, I allowed myself to find my way back toGod. My isolation ended.”

She then felt that God was asking her to leave the security and well-established routine of her senior job, which she loved, and to apply for a job as Matron back at the very hospital from where she had started: Mildmay Mission Hospital in a run-down part of the East End of
London.

Ruth went to the interview full of doubts and fears. But when she heard that at midnight the day before it had been decided to make Mildmay
Europe’s first AIDS hospice, “I was ecstatic – I wanted the job desperately!” “I had seen several people die terribly of AIDS in Southend – shunned by their friends and community. This would give me an opportunity to help such people who were so ill. I felt that I had known something of this terrible feeling of isolation as well. I thought if only the Lord would let me work with the ‘unacceptable’, perhaps I could help them from my own experience.”

The hospital board agreed with her. “What an amazing amount you will have to offer to people who come to this place,” one board member observed.

And so in 1987 Ruth went to Mildmay as Matron, and assisted the Medical Director to set up an AIDS hospice and support groups for the families of the AIDS patients, and even a family care centre where families could stay alongside their loved one who was dying. In due course Ruth became General Manager of the hospice, before being appointed to be Group Chief Executive of Mildmay Hospital UK and Mildmay International, which does outreach to Africa and elsewhere.

Then Ruth noticed that Mildmay had started to get many patients from various African countries. “What about the care on offer in their own countries? I knew next to nothing about it.”

So Ruth applied for a series of scholarships, to visit various African countries and to research care issues. Her trip began in Kenya in early 1991, where the British Council asked if Mildmay would be interested in bidding for a programme for East Africa. The programme would teach doctors, nurses and counsellors throughout Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda how to care for AIDS patients. Mildmay said yes, and for the next seven years Ruth acted as course director of this programme.

It was in 1992, while on a visit to Uganda, that Ruth met the head of the Uganda AIDS Commission, a government post. He knew of Mildmay’s AIDS work in London, and asked Ruth if Mildmay would come to Uganda and set up a care programme for people with HIV/AIDS.

And so it was in 1993 that Mildmay committed itself to work with people living with AIDS in Uganda. “What surprised us was how many of the patients were dying not because of AIDS, but of preventative lesser illnesses they’d contracted. So we saw remarkable recoveries.”

One of Ruth’s tasks was to negotiate for funding for the work in Uganda. “I really felt called by God to go to the British government and ask for the £3.3m needed to develop The Mildmay Centre in Uganda and run it for
three years. The bid was successful, and in 1998 the centre was opened just six kilometres outside Kampala on Naziba Hill. It began as an out-patients referral centre for adults and children with HIV/AIDS,” recalls Ruth. “We have had over 12,000 patients registered since then.”

Ruth began to wish she could spend more time herself in Africa. But as Group Chief Executive for Mildmay International, with headquarters in London, it was just not possible. “So I felt torn in two – my heart was in Africa.” There was only one solution: “I began to pray and think about taking early retirement.”

And so in 2001 Ruth retired from her post as Group CEO of Mildmay International, and went out as a volunteer for Mildmay to develop children’s services in Uganda.

Plans were drawn up to develop day-care houses for children on the same site but above The Mildmay Centre. The funding for this project was given in an amazing way. The first house was funded mainly from Christian individuals, trusts and companies. The second house was funded by Spring Harvest – from the Millennium Year collections, and the third house, the residential hostel, the training unit and the hospital were funded by a member of Ruth’s home church in Shoeburyness. He was a multimillionaire who had just become a Christian through a local Alpha Group! This benefactor also assisted with the running costs for the programme. Because the funding comes from Christian sources, there was no problem about introducing a Christian ethos into the centres.

“We began to see such wonderful result that we felt the Lord was leading us to find ways in which we could help more children in Uganda. And so the programmes with Rural Day Care Centres were initiated. The pilot programme was in Luwero and then one in Jinja and one in Ntungamo.

Now it was time for Samaritan’s Purse to get involved.

Ruth had first met Samaritan’s Purse in the autumn of 2002, when Mildmay Jajja’s Home was chosen for part of the annual Operation Christmas Child shoe box delivery. The SP staff was so impressed by the work Mildmay were doing that they invited Ruth and her Executive Assisant, Sue, to come along to a conference on HIV/AIDS that they were holding in Uganda.

Then things started moving fast: Ruth received another phone call, this time from Mrs Museveni, the wife of the President of Uganda, who is a committed Christian. Ruthrecalls: “Maama, as she is known here in Uganda, asked me if I would help develop a National Christian Referral Hospital for children in Uganda. I thought she meant she wanted my help with fund raisng. But no – she wanted me to be co-chair with her of this new venture.” So, by the time the SP conference began, Ruth had found a piece of land for this new hospital, right beside the Mildmay Hospital on Naziba Hill.

Mrs Museveni soon sent a message to Samaritan’s Purse through Ruth, to ask for help with funding.

SP responded with immediate interest, and it was decided that SP would pay for the land for the hospital, and all the land purchase expenses, as well as offering senior administrative expertise at board level. SP has even identified and supported a Director of Operations for the project, who is working for Ruth.

Now comes the latest chapter in the story: SP has just agreed to fund Ruth’s plan to set up the first Rural Day Care Programme to be established in a Christian Mission Hospital. The hospital at Kasese was chosen because the local community is deeply committed to supporting the project in partnership with Mildmay, by providing food and volunteers to work assisting families with sick children, and running the programme.

The need around Kasese is certainly vast: there is a high orphan population, many of whom have HIV/AIDS “Our plan is to run the day-care centre like a Saturday club for children to come to, 100 at a time,” says Ruth. “Each clinic will have a doctor, a nurse and a counsellor. The children will be registered with the sick and most needy children being given priority. Our main focus will be on health and social care monitoring and spiritual support.We will treat the sick children, feed the malnourished children, support the child-headed households and the abused children and work hand inhand with the church leaders.

“In Africa, children who have AIDS are at the bottom of the pile.When there is not enough food to go around, they are simply left out, as they are often considered hopeless cases anyway. But God still loves them! And so do we.

The children who are older, and not at school, will alsobe taught some income-generating activities: makingthings they can sell,from jewellery to rugs to tablecloths.

So – Samaritan’s Purse has agreed to fund the Kases Programme at £6000 a year for five years. It will help Mildmay to help thousands of children, their carers and their communities.

“Working with a core staff of six trained Ugandans, we will empower the local people to provide home care to the sick, and we will supply medicines and emergency supplies.We will do all this in the name of Jesus,” says Ruth. The programme will be carried out by trained local people in their own language, who can communicate with the communities in an appropriate manner.

Every fortnight the community volunteers providing home care, will each report back to the Co-ordinator at the Saturday club/clinic. Serious cases of illnesses can then be treated, discussed and referred to the nearest
hospital if necessary.

The difference it makes? “We have found that once a community becomes sensitised to the issues their orphans are living with, they want to help them. The women in the community are willing to help with food and overseeing the child-headed households, while the men can help by
spending time with the teenage boys.”

Ruth Sims stresses that: “The spiritual part of the programme is very important – with each clinic starting with prayers and Bible stories and opportunities for spiritual counselling. There is also a chance to play! Many of these children are carrying enormous responsibilities for their even younger siblings – they need some time off, time to be children again!” Some children as young as 5 years are caring for sick parents.

Kasese is of course, just one part of Uganda. The plan is next year to launch a similar scheme in another part of Uganda – if the financial backing can be found.

It is the aim of Mildmay and Samaritan’s Purse to develop these Rural Day Care Programmes throughout Uganda.

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