Counter makes difference in Africa

Local fundraising helped pay for machine

The three years of fundraising it took to raise $30,000 and buy a CD4 counter AIDS diagnostic machine for the Canadian Medical Clinic in Ngodzi, Malawi are now paying off. “Already we are getting interesting results,” wrote Dr. Chris Brooks to Billy Willbond, president of ICROSS (International Community for the Relief of Starvation and Suffering) Canada. “One or two people have unexpectedly low counts, and therefore need anti-retroviral drugs. Without the counter, they would not have been picked up.”

Brooks thanked Willbond, a Saanichton resident, and the rest of the ICROSS team, for all the work they did to acquire the equipment and bring it personally to Malawi, as Willbond did. “You are, without a question, helping to put Lifeline Malawi on the leading edge of medical work here in Malawi,” Brooks said.

ICROSS Gulf Islands director Mollie Colson, who joined Willbond on that trip to Africa, said that after the purchase of the CD4 counter, it took a lot of garage sales and hundreds of small, local contributions to build up the necessary funds. Willbond said that ICROSS made sure to purchase the machine from a South African medical supply company. “They have technicians and they can repair it, keep it up to date,” he said. “If we bought it in Europe, we could buy it cheaper, but who would service it?”

Willbond explained the ways in which the counter would help fight AIDS: “If you have a machine, it tells you what stage of AIDS they are at and what treatment they neeed,” he said. The clinic can only apply for free supplies of anti-retroviral drugs with the assessment offered by the machine. “You can’t just say ‘I’m treating 5,000 patients a month,’” Willbond said. “With the machine you can prove it. It’ll save lives, especially for those in the first stage.” He said that AIDS fatality rates in Africa are so high because it isn’t caught in time, but with the counter diagnosis will be sped up.

The next fundraising project for ICROSS Canada is a new portable X-ray machine. “We probably won’t be able to buy it overnight,” admitted Willbond, noting that the X-ray machine costs around $50,000. “We’ve got around $400 or $500, but you’ve got to start somewhere.”