Gift of 40 Campaign in the Latest PIH Newsletter

Commuting in rural Lesotho.

Approximately one quarter of the country’s adult population is HIV-positive, and life expectancy in the tiny mountain kingdom—home to just under 2 million people—has plummeted since HIV entered the country in the 1980s. In addition, Lesotho’s people are being ravaged by a second epidemic, tuberculosis (TB). Lesotho’s TB rate is the fourth highest in the world, and people whose immune systems have been weakened by HIV are especially vulnerable to the disease. Approximately 76 percent of TB patients in Lesotho are co-infected with HIV. While people who reside in Lesotho’s major cities live, on average, to about 40, people residing in rural Lesotho—where PIH primarily works—are less likely to reach that marker. Consequently, nearly 20 percent of children living in Lesotho have lost their parents to either HIV or TB.

A group of Partners In Health (PIH) supporters—all bound by a common birth year, 1970—are working to change these statistics. These activists, many of who have never met in person, include journalists, academics, writers, and concerned parents. Together, they have launched the Gift of 40 Campaign.

Read the full article here.