Our World is a new series featuring images and perspectives from the field. Irene Gulavi is head nurse at Friends Kaimosi Hospital in Kenya’s Western Province. She talks about a garden project the hospital initiated to save money and help patients living with HIV.
“We discovered we were spending a lot of money buying green vegetables from the market, so we initiated [this garden project]. It was a plain field which we then developed into food. And now we are getting a lot of support from here, because the hospital is getting the green vegetables for their patients and we’re generating a little money also, because if any staff wants some of the vegetables, she pays for it.”
“We are also showing our patients living with AIDS—they come and copy the way vegetables are planted. We are showing them you don’t need a very big plot to have vegetables on…just something small like that carries a lot of iron for her. We call them kitchen gardens, and they all now have kitchen gardens at home.”
“This plant [amaranth] has a lot of iron and is very good for people living with HIV/AIDS. It is short lived, after a month it dies, but the green leaves are very nutritious, and those women are being taught how to use it at home. You can mix it, you can make porridge. The seeds are turned into porridge for their breakfast, leaves are used for eating like any other vegetable, so it is a very nutritious plant and that is why we encourage it to be used. And most people have planted it in their homes.”
“In fact these gardens bring them closer. They [participating patients] are just united. And the fear which used to be there has reduced—last week we had a seminar on patients’ rights, and they all stood up: ‘I’m so-and-so, I’m HIV positive’…. We are about to overcome stigma.”
In a catchment area of 350,000, Friends is the only hospital as well as the only facility that provides HIV care and treatment.
IntraHealth has supported the hospital by posting three health workers for the Comprehensive Care Clinic through the Emergency Hiring Plan, improving the working environment through the Workplace Climate Improvement Initiative, and assisting in the development of a grant from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. IntraHealth's support for Friends continues through Capacity Kenya.
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