New book shares proven ways to help children live with HIV

Categories: Care, Featured, and In The Media.

Photo: Cover of the book

Hesperian Health Guides, producer of what the World Health Organization has called “the most widely used health manual in the world,” announced the publication of a game‐changing child survival resource, Helping Children Live with HIV. The book’s primary author and researcher is Susan McCallister and was co-authored by Todd Jailer and Zoe Marinkovich.

Wisdom from hundreds of people

Packed with suggestions, techniques, and tools parents and caregivers can use to support children made vulnerable by HIV, this resource collects and shares the wisdom of  hundreds of people from more than a dozen countries. While based in Berkeley, CA, Hesperian mobilized participation and feedback from community experts and medical professionals on the front lines of dealing with the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Highlighting the book’s combination of medical information with family support and community organizing for change, the former US Global AIDS Coordinator Dr. Eric Goosby said, “Bold, comprehensive, community‐centered care focused on solidarity, inclusion and capability, not just infection.”

Helping Children Live with HIV covers information on:

  • how HIV can affect a child’s development and techniques to help vulnerable children develop how to discuss HIV, illness, and death with children in developmentally appropriate ways
  • up‐to‐date medical information to demystify and facilitate treatment, and make it possible to recognize and care for many common child illnesses within the community
  • how to eat enough healthy food for a healthy life
  • how to emotionally support a child who has lost a parent or loved one, or who is ill herself from HIV, and how to support families coping with loss
  • how to help children take medicines and participate actively in their treatment
  • how to prevent and treat HIV to keep mothers healthy and prevent HIV from spreading
Preventing and responding to child abuse

Other groundbreaking content includes information on how to prevent and respond to abuse of children (physical, emotional, or sexual), and medical and non‐medical ways to help children with pain.

The world now has the knowledge and medicines to prevent any child from being born HIV‐positive. But until that knowledge develops the political will to become reality, about 200,000 babies yearly will join the 1.8 million children living with HIV worldwide. These children, and children in all kinds of vulnerable circumstances, in the US and elsewhere, desperately need caregivers ‐ parents, teachers, day‐care workers, neighbors ‐ who understand how they can be Helping Children Live with HIV.

As Teresa Courville RN and Ann Petru MD, of the Pediatric AIDS Program of Children’s Hospital in Oakland, CA said: “This is a fabulous resource for caregivers, community health workers, social workers, early education advocates, child development specialists and anyone striving to improve the quality of life for children living with HIV. With simple, yet comprehensive explanations, this guide provides information at a glance dealing with all aspects of care with charming vignettes and beautiful pen‐and‐ink drawings encompassing family and child portraits from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds.”

Visit the website to learn more and buy the book.

For more information please contact:
Deborah Cunningham
Communications and Outreach Associate
deborah@hesperian.org

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