What is HIV/AIDS?

HIV, Human Immunodeficiency Virus, is a virus that weakens the immune system whereby without treatment, will develop into AIDS; Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. 34 million people worldwide are currently living with HIV.

 

Transmission, Testing & Treatment

HIV is transmitted through blood and other bodily fluids such as semen and vaginal fluid. This exchange of fluids can occur through sexual intercourse, drug injection, breastfeeding or during pregnancy with an infected mother. You cannot transmit HIV through hugging, kissing, coughing, shaking hands or sharing cutlery!
HIV can be detected through a number of tests with blood or an oral fluid sample.
In the Western World, as soon as one is tested positive for HIV - antiretroviral treatment is recommended to slow down the replication of the virus in the body, which maintains a healthy immune system. A CD4 count is performed to determine the number of healthy T cells that HIV has not infected. In developing countries only when the count is low enough (by UN regulations 350 cells/microlitre) will a patient start on antiretroviral treatment.

Once on AIDS treatment, the aim is to slow down the replication of HIV in the body, which slows the weakening of the immune system. An HIV positive person who adheres to their regimen with the correct nutrition should stay healthy for many years. Antiretroviral treatment is for life. Even when a patient's viral load (the amount of virus in the bodily fluid) is undetectable, the virus can still be transmitted. Unfortunately, an AIDS vaccine has not been developed therefore, Stars of Hope Uganda's mission is to give patients at our clinics and sites access to this treatment that will prolong their life and maintain a healthy immune system.

Access to treatment

Even with intensified efforts by governments to make treatment available, more than half the people who need them still don't have access to the AIDS medicines that will keep them alive. Thousands continue to die unnecessarily in the greatest human catastrophe known to man.

Stars of hope Uganda is founded on the belief that treatment for HIV/AIDS is a fundamental human right that should be guaranteed to all people. Our work of scaling-up clinics in resource poor communities throughout Uganda brings free comprehensive HIV/AIDS treatment and care to those who need it most to survive.

Today, decreases in funding for AIDS threaten to drive another nail in the coffin of a continent still struggling to overcome the injustice of AIDS. Stars of hope Uganda refuses to let the promise of universal access to AIDS treatment slip away. We remain committed to providing life-saving treatment to the poor and to engaging the global public in our urgent response.

Vulnerable Children

We live in a world where more than 16 million children have been orphaned by AIDS, 14.9 million in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. Stars of hope Uganda, founded as an urgent response to access AIDS treatment to the poor, increasingly finds itself responding to the epidemic of orphaned and vulnerable children whose parents could not be saved in time.
In Africa, where before AIDS there was no word for orphan in any language, an entire generation of children has grown into adulthood without the love, care and protection of their parents. AIDS has decimated the extended family system: children have been robbed of their parents, and the elderly left with a generation of grandchildren to raise in their old age. Communities that once formed a safety net that absorbed children in need have long been overwhelmed by the number of orphans left by AIDS stretched beyond their limit to help.
The circumstances faced by these children in their daily struggle to survive - to find shelter, food and safety from the dangers that surround them - demand a greater response from the entire world. Stars of hope Uganda is committed to supporting community-based care programs that help children living in child headed-households, care homes for children orphaned by AIDS and alone in the world, and places of safety for the growing number of child victims of rape and abuse.

Food for Life

Food is essential to nourish and sustain all life, and for people with AIDS proper nutrition is as important to their survival as the drugs themselves. Food helps ARV medications to be absorbed by the body effectively, strengthens the immune system and allows someone with AIDS to experience the transformative effects of the drugs.
But many of the children and families underserved by access to AIDS treatment face the same challenge in getting even the basic nutrition they need to survive. For some, the immediate relief of food to quiet the cries of a child suffering from hunger is preferred to the drugs - even when the drugs can mean long-term survival.
Stars of Hope Uganda recognizes that food is an integral part of comprehensive treatment for AIDS. In the communities where we work, extreme poverty makes access to critically needed nutrition an impossibility for many in our care. S H U provides food assistance, including monthly food parcels, to patients on ARVs who would go hungry without support for nutrition.
As large-scale relief agencies cut back food aid to countries still reeling from the devastation of the AIDS pandemic, commodities prices soar and disease threatens crop staples, the number of patients in need of nutrition rises daily.Stars of Hop Uganda is committed to providing comprehensive treatment that includes support for food so that those in our care can be restored to health and productivity.

AIDS in Africa
Two-thirds of people worldwide with HIV are in Sub-Saharan Africa

• 68% of people infected with HIV are in Sub-Saharan Africa, making it the most heavily affected region in the world
• 22.5 million people are living with HIV and 15 million children have been orphaned due to HIV/AIDS
• The impact of AIDS in Africa affects every aspect of life, from households changing, to food production and the economy but most importantly, AIDS in Africa affects the children
• Children also face the horrifying idea of sexual abuse and rape especially in South Africa where 50 child rapes are reported everyday. There is an urgent need to provide safety, protection and care for these children.
• Only 44% of those in need of AIDS treatment are receiving it. Providing anti-retroviral treatment and surrounding support to those infected with HIV can sustain life, protect from opportunistic infections and give the chance at a longer life expectancy of 47 years which is the current average in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Lets come together and see our world Healed.
Edwine Businge
Founder Director

The Power of Prayer

 

The Power of Prayer

God is sovereign – at times, inscrutably so. That being the case, in what sense can we say that the Sovereign Lord, the One who transcends all imaginable boundaries and who knows all things, makes decisions? In his timeless plan, God has conceived all possible scenarios and has thought of every possible contingency. There has never been an event that took God by surprise, and there never will be. 

There is great comfort in this, because we come to realize that as imperfect creatures living in an imperfect world, we can never really disappoint God. We can grieve him, but we cannot thwart or frustrate him. In spite of how our world appears to us, because of God’s supreme sovereignty and wisdom, it is exactly the way he knew it would be, and we are right on schedule in the unfolding of his plan to bring us to the best of all possible worlds. God has even incorporated the foolish, sinful decisions of people into his divine scheme. Things that were meant for evil and harmful purposes, God weaves into his good will to accomplish his program in our world (Genesis 50:20). Because he is omniscient, his plan is based not on appearances but on consequences. Because he is omnipotent, he is able to fully accomplish his purposes. Because he is omnipresent, his dominion continually encompasses the created order. Because he is not bound by space and time, he views all things from the perspective of an eternal now; a particular moment to us can be an eternity to God, and yet the entire life span of the cosmos can be an instant to him (2 Peter 3:8).

Though the Lord our God sits enthroned on high, he “stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth” (Psalm 113:6). He is transcendent and majestic, but he is also imminent, attentive and compassionate. Even though God is all-powerful, all-knowing and ever-present, the Scriptures portray his very real interaction with his people in earthly time and space and affirm that our prayers make a difference in the outworking of God’s purposes. As Philip Yancey writes:

God is not a blurry power living somewhere in the sky, not an abstraction like the Greeks proposed, not a sensual super-human like the Romans worshiped, and definitely not the absentee watchmaker of the Deists. God is personal. He enters into people’s lives, messes with families, calls people to account. Most of all, God loves.

God is not a man, nor does he change his mind (1 Samuel 15:29). However, the Bible does not shrink from attributing emotions to him. No one has expressed this more eloquently than Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel:

To the prophet, God does not reveal himself in an abstract absoluteness, but in a personal and intimate relation to the world. He does not simply command and expect obedience; He is also moved and affected by what happens in the world, and reacts accordingly. Events and human actions rouse in him joy or sorrow, pleasure or wrath…. Man’s deeds may move Him, affect Him, grieve Him or, on the other hand, gladden and please Him.

[T]he God of Israel is a God Who loves, a God Who is known to, and concerned with, man. He not only rules the world in the majesty of his might and wisdom, but reacts intimately to the events of history.

Of course, before God was the God of Israel, he was the God of Abraham. The story of Abraham’s prayers on behalf of the few righteous people in Sodom illustrates the biblical truth that God mysteriously incorporates our prayers into his eternal plan. Abraham founded his intercession on the unswerving justice of the Ruler of the world:

Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”

The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing – to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city because of five people?”

“If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.”

Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?”

He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.”

Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?”

He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”

Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?”

He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.”

Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?”

He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”

When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.

Genesis 18:20-33

Theologians from many different backgrounds find common ground in the important role of prayer. John Wesley is frequently quoted as saying, “God will do nothing in the affairs of men except in answer to believing prayer.” John Calvin affirms that the providence of God does not exclude the exercise of human faith. While God neither sleeps nor slumbers, Calvin says, “He is inactive, as if forgetting us, when He sees us idle and mute.”Jack Hayford says, “You and I can help decide which of these two things – blessing or cursing – happens on earth. We will determine whether God’s goodness is released toward specific situations or whether the power of sin and Satan is permitted to prevail. Prayer is the determining factor.” As Walter Wink is fond of saying, “History belongs to the intercessors.”

The Bible often uses language that ascribes human form or attributes to God, and because of this, it appears that God changes his mind in light of new input. If this were true in an absolute sense, it would mean that at least some of God’s decisions were initially inadequate or ill-informed and in need of revision. Based on God’s perfect character, we know that isn’t true. So it appears that these passages provide us with a relative – rather than an absolute – perspective to stress the dignity of human choice and interaction with God.

We serve such a great God,

Blessings

Bro Edi

For Donation Send through this Ministry website bellow,,Please specify;Edwine Busingehttp://www.gods-ambassadors.org/ Confirm,,emails     Jerry Thomas gamission@juno.com    and   ediebusi@gmail.com ,

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