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Keep A Child AliveKeep A Child Alive (KCA) is a donor-provided antiretroviral (ARV) therapy program for children and their families with HIV/AIDS in Africa and the rest of the developing world. With headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, the campaign asks the public to donate a dollar a day—a monthly contribution of $30—so that they can offer support services and purchase the lifesaving AIDS medicines that are currently available to only one in five people who need them.[1]
Additional recommended knowledge
BackgroundKCA founder and President Leigh Blake was first inspired to start this initiative in 2002 after an encounter at the AIDS Research and Family Care Clinic, a place which she helped fund, in Mombasa, Kenya. A woman named Anne brought her 3-year-old son Brine for medical care, refusing to leave until she received the “drugs that you have in America for your children.” [2] Blake, who had already become involved in the AIDS epidemic using her background in the music and film industry to co-found the Red Hot Organization and Artists Against AIDS Worldwide, told Anne that she would pay for the drugs. In so doing, the idea for Keep A Child Alive was born. The drugs were about $1200 a year through the New York University Hospital AIDS Research Department, which at that time was overseeing care at the clinic through Dr. Shaffiq Essajee, now KCA's Treatment Grant Director. It was not long before word started to spread and friends of Blake and Essajee offered to make contributions. The first donor was KCA Chair Peter Edge and soon, KCA Global Ambassador Alicia Keys joined the cause, sponsoring children along with Iman and many others. In 2003, Keep A Child Alive was officially founded. The clinic in Kenya that led to Blake's vision became a model for other facilities that KCA now aspires to build throughout Africa and the developing world.[3] The MissionKeep a Child Alive brings attention to the already 25 million people that have been killed by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa and the millions more that are threatened and orphaned by the disease. By the end of 2006, 39.5 million people were living with HIV or AIDS, including 2.3 million children under the age of 15. Despite AIDS being a preventable and treatable disease, 2.9 million people died from AIDS related causes last year, including 380,000 children under the age of 15—the equivalent of one child dying per minute.[4] KCA's efforts continue to focus in particular on sub-Saharan Africa as it remains the worst-affected region in the world. With a little more than one-tenth of the world's population living in this area, it is home to almost 64 percent of all people living with HIV—of the overall 24.5 million infected, 2 million are children. While access to ARV therapy has increased more than eight-fold since the end of 2003, only 17 percent of people in need of treatment receive it.[5] In addition to improving access to ARV therapy, KCA offers a range of support services including nutritional projects, diagnostic testing, training of health care workers, counseling, and funding sites where AIDS orphans can be cared for. KCA programs are operated through one-time contributions and monthly donations from what the organization calls "love donors" and "life donors."
SitesKeep A Child Alive currently has six main treatment sites: Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, and India. The following is a list of orphanages, clinics, and health centers that KCA directly funds at its official sites and elsewhere:
Treatment sites purchase their supplies locally to support developing economies. In addition, donations are used to support (1) infrastructure and capacity-building, including the purchase of laboratory tests that help determine when to begin antiretroviral treatment and monitor its effectiveness; and (2) training for doctors, nurses, and other health care workers to provide ARV therapy and administer treatment programs. [6] KCA anticipates future treatment sites in the Caribbean and other countries that have been hit hardest by HIV/AIDS. Projects
CampaignsSpirit of a Child I Am African Become A Drug Dealer Celebrities and ArtistsMany celebrities and recording artists have lent their voices to the KCA campaign. They include:
I Am African
Spirit of a Child
Public Service Announcements
Corporate PartnersKCA maintains that the reason it is able to give such a large percentage of monthly donations is because it relies on larger contributions from foundations, corporations, and major individual donors to support management and administrative costs. [10] The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Donna Karan, Time Warner Cable, and Maybelline are just a few of KCA's many corporate partners. The full list can be accessed here. [11] References
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Keep_A_Child_Alive". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia. |