Who We Are // GlobeMed at Northeastern

GlobeMed at Northeastern is one of 50 GlobeMed chapters working to improve the health of people living in poverty around the world. We partner with Kitovu Mobile AIDS Organization in Masaka, Uganda to

• provide high quality access to HIV/AIDS care
• support community development that improves the health of the community
• support children orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS

Our Partner // Kitovu Mobile AIDS Organization in Masaka, Uganda

Kitovu Mobile aims to create an empowered community with the ability to cope with HIV/AIDS and its impact. To improve the quality of life of people affected by HIV and AIDS, Kitovu Mobile works with communities in the areas of prevention, care, support and capacity building. They focus their work on the most vulnerable groups in the district, including people living with HIV and AIDS and tuberculosis, orphans and other vulnerable children, widows and grandmothers.

Kitovu operates 121 health centers and trains community workers to sensitize local communities about such topics as basic facts of HIV/AIDS, behavior change, family planning, and home-based care. They also provide counseling for communities to assist them in dealing with the consequences of HIV/AIDS.

Our Project // $7000 to Improve Hygiene and Sanitation

GlobeMed at Northeastern University partners closely with Kitovu Mobile AIDS Organization located in the Masaka region of Uganda. Our national model allows us to work directly with the grassroots organization that we are funding: we speak with the leaders of the organization on a regular interval and even visit the organization in Uganda during summer internships.

Kitovu Mobile is traditionally an AIDS Organization, but it
also implements water sanitation and hygiene projects in addition to community level run education projects about the necessity for clean water and about the AIDS retrovirus. Kitovu Mobile serves about 950,000 people in the Masaka district, which has an HIV prevalence of about 12 percent. Uganda is also plagued by “unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation [which] causes 80% of diseases and kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war” (charitywater.org). In Uganda, “90% of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and unhygienic living conditions are to children under five years old” (charitywater.org).

For the 2012-2013 academic year, we hope to assist our partner in construction of 10 more water tanks, 10 more pit latrines, and 500 tippy-taps. We also wish to help our partner increase awareness and knowledge about the health problems in this part of Uganda as well as lessen the amount of health disparities exhibited.

By working closely with Kitovu Mobile, we hope to overcome some of these difficulties that threaten the basic safety and wellbeing of the population of Masaka Uganda. We aim to raise as much possible for our partner organization’s cause, and can only do so with the support of our friends, family, and our community here in America.