DREAM HIV centre has over 1 3000 clients
Drug Response Enhancement against AIDS and Malnutrition (DREAM), Blantyre centre has 13043 clients benefiting under its services since it opened its doors in 2006.
The facility which is located around top Mandala was introduced to provide prolonged drugs to those that are HIV positive and at the same time to provide nutritional support if a person’s nutrition status is low.
Steven Pindani, is the centre’s coordinator, and he disclosed that the centre has seen an overwhelming response from the general public which makes it to have such a good number of clients receiving treatment from the health centre.
“We have a good number of people that are getting health services from our facility and they are registered where all details like their past history that include how many children they have, how many are dead, how many are positive and so on and their particulars are entered into our system’s records,” said Pindani.
He added that the client’s details are entered with letters BC in the first place which he did not clarify what it means.
“Two types of groups come here whereby the first group is that of people who are referred from HTC centres such as Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QUECH), Macro and those that come with friends. The service here is provided for free and when we get a critical patient he/she is referred to QUECH for further treatment,” he said.
The centre has a well installed laboratory machine and is considered the biggest in Malawi’s health facilities. The laboratory has sections with specific roles played in as far as getting a patient tested is concerned.
“When we receive clients, we make sure that we conduct each and every test on him/her so that our final results should be genuine. And when our machine detect negative or positive on someone’s results, that remains the same because we have the machines in our laboratory that cannot be compared to any health facility in Malawi.
Dream program is an umbrella of Saint’Egidio which begun in 1968 in Rome with an aim of reaching out to poor people.
In Malawi, the program started in 2004 in Dowa district at Ntengo wa Nthenga and came to Blantyre around May, 2006 and has centres at Chileka, Machinjiri, Kapeni among others.
