Global Health Progress

Every year on December 1, World AIDS Day, we imagine a world free of HIV/AIDS. What would it take to make it happen? Catharine Bufalino of African Services describes how her organization works within at-risk communities every day to help defeat this devastating disease.

Staff of African Services’ clinic in Addis Ababa.

Families in African Services pediatric HIV care program.

For 15 years, African Services, a non-profit organization working in New York City and Ethiopia, has strived to ensure that as HIV prevention and treatment advances globally, African communities that  bear a disproportionate burden of the epidemic also receive the care and support they need to look forward to a world without AIDS.

From our offices in Harlem, a gateway community for newcomers from across the Diaspora, African Services provides HIV prevention education, testing, access to treatment and multilingual support groups for newly-arrived African immigrants. Many have been affected by war, persecution, poverty and global health inequalities; they are also at high risk for HIV infection. But through community-based outreach, prevention and care, African Services has shown that it is possible to de-stigmatize HIV testing and care and help immigrant communities benefit from early access to treatment.

In 2003, we took our knowledge and expertise in HIV care to the frontlines of the global epidemic and opened our first HIV testing center in Ethiopia.

Since then, African Services has helped over 75,000 people learn their HIV status and now operates HIV clinics in Addis Ababa, Wollo and Tigray provinces. Yet again, our approach aims to expand HIV care at the community level by targeting the most underserved communities and engaging those at most risk in HIV prevention, testing and care.

Over the last two years, we have worked especially closely with a community of migrants living at Entoto, an informal settlement on the outskirts of Addis Ababa. They have come from across Ethiopia to seek AIDS treatment in the capital, but have been unable to find a place in the local health care system. After diagnosing 13 children from Entoto with HIV, African Services worked quickly to expand care to their families and create a comprehensive pediatric HIV case management program. In addition to linking the parents and their children to anti-retroviral therapy, African Services is providing the intensive  counseling families need to nurture their children back to health.

This initiative in Addis has planted the seeds for a much larger effort to expand pediatric HIV care at all three African Services clinics in Ethiopia. In addition to case management support, comprehensive care will include nutritional support, medical support and treatment for opportunistic infection, micro-loans and income generating training to help families support their children’s needs over the long term. It is a model that we have shown works and transforms lives.

Working on the frontlines of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Ethiopia and in New York City, African Services has seen more than two decades of the global fight against AIDS reveal the best and worst of our true social nature—fear, denial, xenophobia and prejudice. But it has also demonstrated the capacity for compassion, care, innovation and advancement around the world despite complex challenges. As we imagine a world free of AIDS, we take comfort in the ability of communities to make progress against the virus through compassionate care. We honor them every December 1st.