Uhai Centre and AAIDRO

I work at the HIV/AIDS unit (Uhai Centre) in the Catholic Archdiocese of Arusha Integrated Development and Relief Office (AAIDRO). As most of you know, Arusha is just west of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Our skyline is dominated by a remnant of the same volcano family as Kilimanjaro – Mt. Meru. There’s no snow, but still beautiful.



Uhai means life in Swahili and the Centre works to improve the lives of people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS. We work both in the office and in the field. In-house, we offer free voluntary counseling and HIV testing (VCT), treatment for opportunistic infections, and give referrals. We have a small pharmacy but no lab, so we have to send people to hospitals or clinics to get a CD4 count, full-on HIV tests (if they think the rapid test we use may be wrong), get tested for tuberculosis, or anything else that needs lab work. A large portion of our work is done in the field. We do mobile VCT, provide education and sensitization seminars, facilitate support clubs for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) as well as orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). We provide education support for some of these children and also provide some nutritional support for PLHA and OVC.

As you can see, there is quite a lingo of acronyms that comes with working in HIV/AIDS.

One of the activities we support is training home-based care providers for PLHA. We have been connected to a small group of these people who were trained a few years ago, but the grant we were just awarded will allow us to train 340 people in the immediate areas around Arusha. We hope that this will help to reduce the over 4,000 office visits we had last year by allowing people to receive care in their homes. The need is great not only for our clients, but all over the country – approximately 50% of all hospital beds in Tanzania are occupied by people who have illnesses related to HIV/AIDS.

Uhai Centre is funded almost exclusively by foreign donors. Our main supporters are CAFOD (the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), Misereor (a German Catholic aid agency), Trócaire (Irish Catholic aid organization), and the World Food Program. Our new grant is coming from a fund that 10 donors have contributed to, including the Canadian International Development Agency (yay Canada!)

Uhai Centre is only a unit within AAIDRO and there are many other projects that operate under AAIDRO’s banner. AAIDRO is currently undergoing a review process and contemplating alternative structuring of its programs and projects. I have been invited to contribute to these discussions recently and I feel very flattered that they have asked for my input.

Overall, I am feeling very professionally satisfied. Although I have been here only a short time, some of my work is beginning to show results and it is exciting.