Bonsomi Annual Message 2018

Dear Friends,

In the beginning of the 2018, Bonsomi Healthcare Foundation designed a specific plan made up of two components, providing free access to quality healthcare to low income uninsured Congolese women and expressing our solidarity to children living with HIV.

In our first project, Women Deserve Better (WDB), Bonsomi worked through fundraising and donations to pay the medical bills of some Congolese women who had been detained in hospitals for two or more weeks in the city of Kinshasa (the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo/DRC). Another goal of this project involved sending the message that Congolese women deserve access to free quality care. We collaborated with Congolese journalists to spread the message, via a short video, back home and it was a success. Dr. Oly Ilunga Kalenga, the current health minister acknowledged, in his recent speech, that there is limited access to basic healthcare services and poor healthcare outcomes in DRC, and he believes that the country still has a long way to go in order to meet the basic healthcare needs of the people. Though his statements are facts, we also believe that every progress begins with the first step, which in the case of DRC should be an elaboration of a clear and concise healthcare plan that can be thoroughly followed for generations. This hasn’t occurred due to the lack of true leadership. The current government has been in power for the past 17 years and no healthcare plan or improvement, even a slight one, has been made in DRC. Instead, the situation keeps on deteriorating at a faster rate every day. We hope that with the election coming up at the end of the month, Congolese will elect responsible leaders, those with dignity, integrity, vision and effective goals, so as to set the country on a pathway to success.

For our second project, All Against HIV, Bonsomi made a generous donation to Nyumbani Children’s home, a refuge for children affected with HIV. “Nyumbani provides life-saving care and a loving home to more than 120 HIV-positive children in Kenya. Ages newborn to 23, the children live at Nyumbani Children’s Home until they are healthy and self-reliant.” (http://www.nyumbani.org/nyumbani-childrens-home/). The main goal of this project was to express our humanity to those living with HIV, and to remind the world that we should fight alongside those living with HIV/AIDS. A world without HIV/AIDS requires mankind to deeply understand that any effort to control HIV/AIDS must transcend geographic borders and must cover the full spectrum of prevention, detection, treatment, and most importantly community-based support for all. The later hasn’t been fully utilized around the world because there is still a lot of stigma and discrimination towards those living with HIV/AIDS. This is why Bonsomi believes that Instead of emphasizing only on prevention and treatment, we should all spend time educating others about the impact of discrimination on those living with HIV/AIDS. That way, we can reverse all the stigma and prevent any psychological anomaly that can worsen the well-being of the infected people.

We applaud Nyumbani for the amazing work of sheltering and taking care of the kids living with HIV/AIDS. Keep on leading by example!

This concludes Bonsomi’s projects for the year of 2018.