Michael Kellycatches up with The Rose Project founder Mary Donohoe as she gets ready for World Aids Day.
It's easy to become paralysed to the point of inaction by the unstintingly grim statistics we hear about the Aids pandemic in Africa, but every now and then the reality of the situation manages to break through and shock us out of our apathy. What if I told you, for example, that there is an injection that mothers can get during pregnancy which prevents transmission of the HIV virus to their children? And that each year for want of this simple injection, 40,000 babies in Malawi alone will be infected in this way, with most of them dying before they reach their second birthday?
In the run-up to World Aids Day on December 1st, the Rose Project founder, Mary Donohoe, wants Irish people to think afresh about Aids in Africa. "The fact that mother-to-child transmission can be prevented has a very low profile. Not many people know that we can do that. People say, 'If only there was a vaccine' - well this is effectively a vaccine for the child." A former nurse at St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin, Donohoe started the Rose Project after spending a few weeks in Nakuru in central Kenya in 2003. "I met a woman called Rose Atieno and I administered medication to her in a rat-infested hut where she later died of Aids at 32 years of age. Her primary carer was her seven-year-old son. Everyone around me was dying and I made the decision to raise funds to provide quality medical and nursing treatment for people affected by HIV and Aids in these communities."
The organisation currently funds 18 projects: in Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Zambia and Malawi, where it is estimated that four million people are in urgent need of antiretroviral treatment.
This week, Donohoe oversees a frenetic period of promotional activity, starting with tomorrow's Ceremony of Light event on O'Connell Street when the Lord Mayor of Dublin will light a tree with red Aids ribbons. "It's all about raising the profile of the pandemic. Diarmuid Gavin is planting a rose named after Rose Atieno at the Mansion House during the week and we have the Rose Project Student Arts Awards at the LAB on Foley Street, Dublin. On the eve of World Aids Day, Newstalk is broadcasting Eamon Keane's documentary African Rose, which he recorded in Malawi with us this year."
African Rose will be broadcast next Thursday, at 12.30pm, on Newstalk 106-108FM. www.roseproject.org