In the last 3 blogs, I have shared how the Amecet Ministry started. Amecet helps children in the Teso region, in North-East Uganda. The Teso region contains 10 different districts and around 2,5 million people live here. The main source of income is agriculture, crops and cows.
Amecet Children's Home is in Soroti City, and we receive children from the whole region and even beyond. In this blog I want to share how many children and their families we have ministered to from the start in December 2001 until December 2023.
In total we had 1198 children in Amecet. From those children were 874 babies, some where only a few hours old when they were brought, some were several months old, quite a number of them were pre-mature born, very small and very vulnerable.
When we started, our priority group where children who were HIV+ and we got in total 190 children who were tested HIV+ and 80 of those children also had TB. Those children often had to stay longer in Amecet, the TB treatment is daily anti TB medicines for 6 months. The HIV+ children were all started on ARV's, which slows down the growth of the virus. In November 2003 we were able to start the first children on ARV's. We got very sick HIV+ children in Amecet, and we have lost quite a number of children, because of AIDS. In the last 5 year we have seen a big change in the children with HIV/AIDS. Because of the good prevention in mother to child infection, we don't have many HIV + children anymore. At the moment we have only one HIV+ baby in Amecet, while in the begin years we had easily 10-15 HIV+ children living with us.
We were able to build good relationships with the different doctors and clinics. We needed their advice and help to treat the many very sick children we got in Amecet. Many of them were in critical condition when they came in Amecet. We lost 110 children between 2001-2023. This was always very painful, to see those little one's suffer and die. For those 110 children Amecet was the doorway to Heaven. We believe they don't suffer now and their pain is over. Every year on December 1st, we remember all the children who passed away that year and we speak out their names and lit a candle. There were years with 10 or 11 candles... When a child dies in Amecet, we call the family, we order a coffin and we bring the body to the village, where the clan will bury the child.
More than 1000 children we could re-settle back with their families. Children who came to us sick, malnourished, lost or abandoned, they went back to their relatives or were fostered to be adopted.. 27 children, who were not able to go back to their relatives, or were abandoned were adopted by foreign families and 65 children were adopted into local, Ugandan families.
This are some of the numbers and statistics... We are thanking you , who has been part of our ministry, for your prayers, your support and your financial gifts. You are part of Amecet!! In the coming blogs I want to introduce our staff members to you, they are the people who are on the ground, feeding, bathing, changing the diapers, but they are also the ones who are tracing the relatives of the children, cleaning our house, washing all those diapers and mowing the grass. When we all do our part, we can do a lot together!!
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