Reports from Swaziland

As we are finishing up our projects, we have been to think about the sustainability of them once we leave. For this reason, we began to seek funding and distribution options for the family planning brochure and the liquid and pill adherence charts. This week, we had a series of meetings to explore these options. First, we met with the Health Promotions Unit and the Sexual Health and Reproduction Unit in the Swaziland Ministry of Health about our family planning brochure. They took immediate interest as they said that they did not have such a government approved material in the country. They said that they would look over the brochure as well as the SiSwati copy of the brochure which we submitted to them and get back to us by the end of the week with corrections and suggestions. They also said that they would talk to World Vision to ask for funding them.

We also met with Mothers 2 Mothers (M2M), which is a organization which encourages HIV+ mothers to talk to other HIV+ mothers to share their stories and give their support. They said that this is a tool that they can definitely use but were unsure about whether they would be able to fund it. Next, we met with the Family Life Association of Swaziland (FLAS) which is the major organization for promoting family planning in Swaziland. They have a lot of family planning materials, but they only distribute them at their 2 FLAS sites, one in Mbabane and one in Manzini. Our brochures are geared towards PMTCT (Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission) sites, which FLAS is not involved with. FLAS Mbabane directed us to FLAS Manzini’s marketing division, but after getting to Manzini, our meeting was unfortunately cancelled for unforeseen reasons. One of the suggestions we got from talking to these organizations though was that family planning posters would be very useful… if clinics ran out of brochures to distribute, patients would still be able to get the information through the posters in waiting and consulation rooms. Thus, we created a poster for family planning as well!

Time for a short break from work: we have been having some fun weekend adventures, including going ziplining at Malolotja Nature Reserve and seeing awesome animals in South Africa’s Kruger National Park and Swaziland’s Mkhaya National Park! The landscape is absolutely beautiful and very unique, and we’ve had excellent and rather close animal encounters!