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Cotlands and the Medical Knowledge Institute partner to launch healthcare information centre in Soweto

Soweto/Oostvoorne (NL), April 21st 2009 - Cotlands, one of South Africa’s oldest and most well-loved children’s charities, has entered into a healthcare education partnership with the Medical Knowledge Institute (MKI), an international non-profit organisation dedicated to healthcare education and healthcare information as a human right. The Health Information Centres are an Initiative of the MKI and will provide health education and healthcare information to the general public from all walks of life, for the purpose of health improvement, taking into consideration their individual cultural sensitivities.

The Health Information Centre will be officially opened by Mrs. Monique van Welie, Senior Policy Officer HIV/AIDS on behalf of the Dutch Ambassador of the Netherlands at the Cotlands’ Community Centre in Soweto on the 12th of May 2009 at 11am. The Centre will primarily focus on educating the local community about HIV related issues, as well as nutrition and dealing with developmental delays in HIV positive children.

Jackie Schoeman, Cotlands’ executive director, says the MKI’s approach to community healthcare education fully aligns with Cotlands’ strategies and she expects that the partnership will create a powerful and dynamic mechanism to raise awareness about critical healthcare issues.

With headquarters in the Netherlands, the MKI’s goal is to offer a platform for the delivery of and easy access to high quality healthcare education and information, while supporting the development and humanitarian goals of healthcare programmes inn developing and transitional countries. The Institute also serves as the hub of the MKI Global Network, a group of autonomous foundations and organisations around the world, implementing a range of initiatives which aim to promote and improve the quality of healthcare as a human right.

The MKI has already established a Health Information Centre in Khayalitsha, Cape Town, providing the local population with access to information on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, hepatitis, healthcare and safety. The MKI’s Health Information Centres offer a variety of training courses which impart different life skills and provide contacts with relevant support and information. The Centres will also create a critical mass of trainers who will continue to empower their local communities.

“MKI is convinced that accessibility to relevant information is the most effective strategy to improve healthcare. I’m very pleased to partner with Cotlands to create a Health Information Centre for the local community and children of Soweto”, says Dr. Harold E Robles, Founder and President, Medical Knowledge Institute.

Cotlands Community Centre, Soweto
Cotlands’ Soweto Home Based Care (HBC) programme is based at its Community Centre in Diepkloof, Soweto, which was opened in September 2008. Here, the HBC programme’s support groups for the primary caregivers of HIV-infected children get together several times a week.
These are women of different ages - including grandmothers who care for their orphaned grandchildren. The support groups, attended by some 80 women every week, provide emotional support and empower the women with knowledge and skills to enable them to give quality care to their HIV infected children and grandchildren. Cotlands provides each participant with a cooked meal and a food parcel to take home at each weekly meeting. The centre also houses the programme’s income-generating projects - beadwork and a thriving pajama “factory”.

Cotlands’ HBC programme in Soweto was established to provide palliative care to chronically and terminally ill children in their homes and to empower their primary caregivers to care for them in the absence of a trained caregiver. Trained HBC workers under the supervision of a professional nurse and supported by a social worker and Cotlands volunteers, assist families to care for HIV-infected children and young orphans at home. Services range across the spectrum of needs, to ensure that families receive whatever support they need to care for their children adequately at home.

Cotlands provides a variety of residential and outreach projects to care for some 5000 vulnerable children and their families, particularly those impacted by HIV/AIDS, around South Africa — every month. Despite the prevention of mother-to-child transmission programmes, many infected babies are still being born annually in Soweto. This number is increased by children who come from other provinces, whose families perceive Gauteng to be better resourced to deal with children living with AIDS.