Home-based carers give vital health care, and support the well-being of thousands of people living with HIV and AIDS. To do their job well, they need training and a kit bag – or box – of essential supplies. Your gifts are keeping them well-equipped.

Take one volunteer
All home-based carers are volunteers. Many, like Rose Witness in Malawi, have been helping their neighbours for years. Now, special training has given Rose the knowledge and skills she needs to care physically and emotionally for people who are chronically ill and their families. And when necessary she can call on the services of a bicycle ambulance to carry patients to a clinic.

Add vital medicines
Oxfam Unwrapped-funded drug kits are available to groups of home-based carers so they can get the right medicines to people when and where they’re needed. Volunteers also carry their own kit bags with toiletries to prevent the spread of infection

And you get...
Rute Chikwakwa, a 48 year-old subsistence farmer living with AIDS. Her husband died in 1992 and her children have grown up. She became ill last year, and now relies on home-based care, which is great because she receives free medicines at home. Before, she had to walk 5km there and back to the clinic, with no guarantee of receiving medicines or treatment. “At one point I lost hope of living,” she says. “But now I know I have friends who love me and care for all my needs.”