Young people are not the only ones living with HIV or AIDS. Yet when one thinks of the spread of HIV and AIDS, particularly in Africa, the image that usually comes to mind is that of young parents leaving behind orphaned children.

"No one thinks of older people contracting the disease," says Dr. Eugenia Giordano, associate director for Johannesburg-based Adventist AIDS Ministry (AAIM). "But there is a subset of specifically grandmothers living with HIV or AIDS."

As Dr. Giordano and her husband Oscar, also a doctor, travel throughout Africa educating both Seventh-day Adventist Church members and those in the community on how to live healthfully with the disease, she meets many older women living with HIV or AIDS. She noticed that many of these women contracted the disease while they were caregivers for their children who had the disease.

"No one was paying attention to this group of people over 50 years old, especially grandmothers, who are HIV positive," she says. "Nobody gave them any kind of information on how to take care of their children with HIV or AIDS and so they were handling blood and other body fluids without protection."

UNAIDS states that out of 40 million people living with HIV there is very little on how the pandemic is affecting the older population and even less about older people living in sub-Saharan Africa.

But HelpAge International, a global network of not-for-profit organizations, estimates that "one in 14 people living with HIV are over 50 and millions more older people are at risk of contracting the disease because governments are still not targeting older people in HIV and AIDS prevention programs."

Realizing the lack of resources and education targeted at older people with HIV, particularly those who are caregivers, AAIM helped to start a support group in Lesotho called the Grandmother's Club. The first club was lead by Evelyn Nkhethoa, a retired Women's Ministries leader in the Adventist church.

"This support group of old ladies meet at local Adventist churches once a week to help each other deal with having HIV," Dr. Giordano says. "But they also go to communities around the church and look for other grandmothers and invite them to join in the group. So they are helping themselves and others in their communities."

The club not only provides crucial weekly peer support but also teaches women basic home-based care. AAIM has provided educational materials to the groups on infection, transmission, nutrition, how to use their limited resources to have a balanced diet, how to take care of orphans and finding income generating actives.

"We try to empower them so they can have income from activities such as gardens. We teach them how to plant gardens so they can feed their family and if they have an excess they can sell," says Giordano.

There are now four grandmothers clubs, two in Lesotho and two in Kenya. AAIM is working with the Adventist world church's Women's Ministries department to send out flip charts teaching women how to do basic home based care.

Giordano says funding is always limited. She encourages those who want to prepare basic home based kits for these grandmothers to visit www.aidsministry.com for more information. [Editor: Taashi Rowe for ANN/APD]