It is Friday. The two vans are on their way up the potholed gravel road, making their way past the metal sheds of the shantytown. The vehicles are filled to the brim with white plastic boxes – filled with patient records and medicine – and volunteers from the aid programme Reach Out. At the top of a slope, the Volkswagen bus comes to a halt in front of a little brownish church and the healthcare workers pour in and out of the church, where crude wooden benches stand in unkempt rows. They pull the records and record sheets out of the boxes. Stacks of medicine, hypodermic needles and pocket torches. In the course of fifteen minutes, a tiny, spartan church hall in the shantytown of Banda is converted into a clinic. The wooden benches quickly fill up with patients who have to collect their medication or have symptoms that need to be investigated. Outside on the grass, two of the healthcare workers are about to rig up a makeshift laboratory – this is where the new arrivals will be tested and those who have already been tested HIV positive can have their immunity levels checked.

In the minister’s vestry behind the altar, the calculations are underway. Three women are already sitting up to their necks in boxes full of tablets and small self-closing boxes, into which the medicine for each patient will go. The altar has been cleared of sacred artefacts – this is where Richard has set up a temporary clinic with a gargantuan pile of patient records. He keeps tabs on who has come, what they are to be tested for and by whom. Richard is one of those people who, just two short years ago, never dreamt he would still be alive today – he came to Reach Out with a huge tumour on his cheek, HIV clearly racing through his body. Now, he is standing there in a newlyknitted blue shirt, a highly attractive middleaged man, calling out the names of those he is sending in to the various nurses and doctors. They sit behind the record sheets that are now hanging in the entry to the church’s nave, and the examinations are now in full swing. Stethoscopes, ballpoint pens, pocket torches. Margrethe Juncker is also sitting there. Like the other volunteers, she has turned two benches so they are facing one another, so that the patients can sit a little like they would in a normal consultation with the doctor or nurse. Her desk is one of the drums from the church – “it’s the perfect height”, she says, laughing. Right at this moment, Rosemary is about to be examined by Margrethe. They talk briefly about her medication, about the children’s school fees and about the micro-loan she has received. She has invested the money from the loan in a small shop she has opened and from which she now sells medicine. ”How are you feeling?” asks Margrethe, looking up from her scribblings on the paper on top of the drum. “Are you okay? Are you happy?” “Yes,” answers Rosemary, smiling shyly. The business is going well and she is fine.

Meanwhile, a group of workers are waiting outside in front of the church for the inhabitants of the shantytown to come up the hill. The workers are advisers who have been trained to help the new arrivals if they test positive. And, unfortunately, that happens all too often. Last month, in just one of the clinics, 288 people came to get tested - 124 of them tested positive. On average, 43% of those who come to get tested are infected with HIV. Three people come slowly along the gravel path towards the church. As they come nearer, it is apparent that their slow pace is due to the woman in the middle. She is so weak that the two others have to carry her. Her head dangles on her frail, skeletal body and her face, which was once youthful and pretty, is now just skin and bones. The two people at her side are giving up. They lift up her tired bones and the man takes her in his arms. She is on her way to the church to be tested for HIV. Forty five minutes later she is a Reach Out patient. ”Is there any chance at all that she will survive?” I ask Margrethe Juncker. “Certainly, we save 95% of the patients who come in looking like that. Many of those you see here today helping also looked like that the first time they came in”. I take a look around – I am surrounded by healthy, happy, well-dressed resourceful people, in full swing helping others. It seems miraculous.

Read more on the challenges that Africa is facing in our company magazine Angle, March 2010 issue