HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM * It takes 30 minutes from downtown by taxi through the motorbike-packed streets of this sprawling megacity to reach the Tieng Vong (Echo) Center. One eventually arrives at a Catholic church, walks to the rear, turns a corner, and there finds an opening to a parish center. Two rooms actually--one a waiting area where two dozen visibly ill men and women sit listlessly; the other, a patient care area with old filing cabinets along the wall, some desks, chairs, and on one side of the room, Nguyen Thi Vinh, a middle-aged, broad-faced woman with a direct manner and a remarkable capacity to live the corporal works of mercy.
This is grace on a shoestring.That makes the Echo Center--and Vinh's work--all the more necessary and remarkable. The center gets the name from an idea: echo, or give back. Vinh says the idea is to echo the gifts people have been given.The children at Mai Tam range in age from only weeks old to 18 years. Classes are offered to children after they reach their sixth birthday.Vinh was early to be working with HTV/AIDS patients. Six years after she began, the archbishop of Ho Chi Minh City, Cardinal Jean-Baptiste Pham Minh Man, was approached by a government official who requested he designate a number of religious to work with HIV/AIDS patients. The government had found it difficult to find willing people. Also, having the Catholic church involved would add credibility to the government's efforts and even open doors a bit for international aid.It costs about $5,000 monthly to run the center, Tuyet Mai said with a grant coming from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, donations from private benefactors, and assistance from the Ho Chi Minh archdiocese.There are an estimated 300,000 people living in Vietnam today with the virus, according to those working with the patients. Official estimates are not quite as high. In truth, no one knows exactly. What those who work with these patients seem to agree on is that the virus is being spread mostly through drug use and needle-sharing, and, secondarily through human trafficking.Vinh cannot do much more. The needs are gargantuan and her resources modest. Day after day, six days a week, from eight to noon, she and her volunteer staff of fewer than a dozen see HTV/AIDS patients, most of them in the last months of their lives. The patients come from throughout the city and beyond, as far away as northern Vietnam.Vinh said she keeps careful records. Each month she compiles a list of the 100 poorest people who come to the center for medicine. These are the ones, she says, who get what amounts to pocket change, small amounts of assistance by most measures--except when you have almost nothing. Then a little help makes a big difference.Vinh and the rest of the staff work entirely without pay.It was in 1998, Vinh recalls, sitting at her desk during a break between seeing patients, that she heard a Redemp-torist priest in a sermon talk about the growing needs of those stricken by the HTV/AIDS virus. Many had been abandoned by their families and were living in the streets.Vinh says that her two biggest problems are keeping staff and maintaining funding. Her staff is young and there continues to be a turnover. Vinh and her daughter seem to be the mainstays. They operate through the donations of the pharmaceuticals, the assistance of some benefactors, and help from the parish, including rent-free rooms.The budget for running the center is roughly $18,000 annually--with all the money given out to neediest of the needy who receive food, transportation, and sometimes small holiday presents for the children.Man complied. He sent out word, asking the religious orders for help. In May 2004, the archdiocese formed Our Lady of Pentecost Community, composed of 15 religious from different male and female congregations. The center has cared for patients in the last stages of AIDS.The numbers continue to rise, but the rate of increase is slowing, offering a glimmer, of hope that this perilous epidemic is not completely out of control. There is an ongoing HIV/AIDS government education program, but misunderstanding and prejudice are still rampant.On this morning Vinh is attending to another woman. Vinh listens, comforts, counsels and eventually hands over a few pills aimed at easing pain, perhaps extending life. Maybe it's also to show someone cares.[Thomas C. Fox is NCR editor. His e-mail address is tfox@ncronline.org.]She and some friends went on a retreat where they put together some plans: They would contact hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and then search out people with the virus. Many of them were hiding, ashamed and abandoned, she explained. It was not easy at first.Across town, meanwhile, about the same time, another Catholic HIV/AIDS ministry was being formed. St. Paul de Chartres Sr. Nguyen Thi Tuyet Mai has been counting pills at the Mai Tarn House of Hope since its beginning some six years ago. The Mai Tam House of Hope cares for women living with the HIV virus along with their children and others, all, some 65 children, mostly carrying the virus, fill up the very active Mai Tam center, which occupies a nondescript, four-story, narrow concrete building and has no sign to identify its purpose.She and her staff receive some three dozen HIV/AIDS patients each morning at the center. In the afternoon, the staff goes out to attend to those too weak--or too fearful--to come to the center. They have been doing this for 13 years. Pharmaceutical companies have donated most of the medicines. The local parish priest, meanwhile, is also a physician who can prescribe medicine.Staff can tell who are "the poorest 100," Vinh said. "You can see by the clothes they wear, the transportation they use, and if they have, say, a mobile phone."On one of the desks in the patient room is a ledger in which the staff keeps careful notes about each person they see, the medicines they take, the needs they have, and assistance offered. Every cent is detailed, in handwritten script."Everything really is in God's hands," Vinh said. "God provides. God will continue to provide."The group spent months, years, at first, seeking out the needy In time, the parish gave them space for the center and eventually, as attitudes in society began to change, people began to come to the center. On the average day, some two- to three-dozen people show up seeking assistance.
[Thomas C. Fox is NCR editor. His e-mail address is tfox@ncronline.org.]
No comments:
Post a Comment