Our homecare teams, comprising our former hospice patients and others living with AIDS, make regular home visits to over 250 families.

Core Initiatives:

• To improve the quality of life of poor people living with HIV/AIDS, allowing them to reside in their family homes, receive proper health care, and live productive lives.
• To ensure that people living with HIV/AIDS have access to the national standard treatment.
• To educate their families about prevention, care, and compassion.
• To ensure the care and education of the children in these families.

History: The HDF operated the city’s first and largest free AIDS hospice from 1993 to 2012. Since anti-viral drugs became accessible, many of our patients have been able to return home to family. To prepare the families for their arrival and create a positive, life-affirming home environment, we established our Home Care Program in 1999. In 2012 we closed our hospice and shifted our focus to our home care program.

Homecare Initiatives and Activities:

Hospital group visits: We work with government hospitals and make monthly visits to groups of poor people living with AIDS, conducting workshops on receiving and administering proper medication; insuring access to treatment; and assessing, maintaining, and strengthening health at home.

Mercy Centre-based counseling: We receive phone-in and walk-in inquiries from new patients, existing patients, and family members of people living with AIDS. In addition, our homecare patients have a direct line to Mercy Centre for questions about treatment and medication or whenever they need help regarding family problems and emergencies.

Hospital registration: HDF-Mercy Centre homecare staff assist in all facets of patient registration at government hospitals. Many of the poor living with AIDS lack the identification papers required to receive government health benefits. In such cases, we assist in gaining the proper documents, a process that often requires travel to home provinces, registration, and many impediments along the way.

Transportation assistance to and from hospitals: Many patients are unable to travel by themselves to a hospital or cannot pay for transportation. We provide whatever assistance is required to ensure our patients visit their doctors for hospital visits.

Home maintenance and repair: Many homecare patients live in squalid conditions lacking proper hygiene. We make home repairs whenever necessary and also help relocate families and provide emergency housing assistance for those facing eviction.

Nutrition: Nutritional supplements, rice, and dry foods.

Job placement, income-earning activities, and micro-loans: HDF Mercy-Centre helps place the poor living with AIDS in both full- and part-time positions. We also provide micro-loans and emergency loans.

Public Health Clinics:

Mercy Centre works with public clinics in poor communities.  We train neighborhood volunteers how to reach out to their neighbors and to identify those individuals in need of medical assistance. We also teach the volunteers how to educate their neighbors about HIV/ADIS prevention and compassion for those infected. 

Sharing Our Homecare Knowledge with HIV/AIDS NGOs and Government Organizations:

Many organizations across Thailand and Southeast Asia now recognize Mercy Centre as a regional leader in home-based care and have asked us for guidance in operating their own home-care programs. In 2011 we formalized our homecare training initiatives as a permanent program and began conducting workshops along the Thai-Myanmar border for Mae Tao Clinic and various health organizations serving refugee populations.

Before we conduct our workshops, we make on-site visits and evaluations. The workshops that follow, also conducted on-site, are tailored to the needs of the organization. Post-workshop evaluations and training sessions continue. In response, we now provide workshops tailored to each organization's needs, in Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar. 

Children’s Outreach Network:

We founded a network that brings together all the children we reach through our homecare programs, HIV positive and negative children alike, and unite them in regular activities with our own children living in Mercy Centre. Children from our homecare network now have a place, outside their own homes, where they know they will always be welcome and cared for with love.

The parents and families of these children also join together with our homecare staff at Mercy Centre and work together to resolve common issues, which include:

• Their children’s education. We provide funding assistance whenever needed to keep kids in school. We also visit schools whenever the children are experiencing discrimination.
• Their children’s future. We work with the families to identify each child’s family support system, including grandparents, aunts and uncles who can care for and love these children in the event they are orphaned.

General Homecare Program Benefits

• Advice regarding medication (where to get and how to take), the provision of nutritional and dry goods supplements, and all additional homecare assistance boost physical health and wellbeing and provide a higher, more rewarding quality of life with family.
• Counseling services help increase understanding of HIV/AIDS for both PLWA and family and reduce their fears.
• Micro-loans and job placements have provided a regular income, a greater sense of integrity and self-worth, and a more positive outlook on life.

Challenges

Ignorance, stigmatization, discrimination, guilt, shame, and poverty.

Related Mercy Centre HIV/AIDS Programs: