Meet Zoya and Zarah, they are part of triplets. Their sister, Zarida, is the middle one of the three. We know the three already for a while. they were born in Soroti hospital on 14 November 2023. That means that they are now 1 year and 2,5 months. We have been asked to see them when they were maybe 3 months old. The mother is single and only 20 years old. That time she lived in the home of a good Samaritan, who felt for her. The 3 little girls were very small and especially two of them were very tiny. They had been born 3 months too early. We could have helped that time by taking 1 or 2 of the girls to Amecet for a while. But the grandmother came and was very hostile to us, she believed that we would sell the girls.... So we just explained what we do in Amecet and offered to bring some clothes, soap and milk formula as supplement, because the mother could not breast feed the three girls. 

In this small coffin lays the little body of Jeremiah. He passed away this morning at 8.15 am. Very peaceful, the little heart just stopped....

Jeremiah was born in the village on 1/12/2024. His mother has a mental sickness, nobody knew the mother was pregnant, nobody knows his father. The mother gave birth at home, she was alone at that time. Jeremiah was a preterm baby, very small and very weak. He was her first born baby. The  baby was brought to the health centre and from there, Jeremiah arrived on the third of December in Amecet. His weight was 1.5 kg. 

In the blog from November 3, 2024 I wrote about the 3 mini baby's we got in one week.  It was quite a challenge, in the beginning we had feed them every 2 hours by NG tube, we had them together in one room, doors and windows closed, so it would be a nice warm room. We were very alert for sickness and how much they drank every day, how much they were gaining etc. 

On December 17th Caroline was brought to Amecet. She was brought by an organization, which works in the villages with families and children who are HIV+. Caro was HIV+, she was very malnourished, very weak and very unhappy.  The situation in her family was also not really stable. They were looking for a place where she could get stronger and more stable in her health. In the past we had received more children in Amecet via this organization. Caro came to us after a week in a hospital. Caro was 13 years old and her weight was just over 22 kg. 

This was for sure a Celebration!!!! Aaron went home with his new Foster mother and will be adopted into a new family in the future!!

It is almost a tradition.... 3 weeks before, we all draw one name and for that person we buy a present. On the day of the party, we all sit in a big circle, the music is on and one by one we give our present to the person whose name we had drawn. People dance and tease people offering it first to the wrong person, sometimes they dance around with 2 or 3 people, everybody is clapping, there is joy, shouting, singing and a lot of laughing...... 

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Many years ago, we started the tradition of remembering the children who died that year, during the World AIDS day. Amecet started 23 years ago with the main target of HIV+ children. In the begin years we had many HIV+ children in our Home. And on December first, we named all the children who had passed on that year, we lighted a candle and shared something about each child, as a last honor to them. This year we had 4 children to remember, and none of them died because of HIV/AIDS!!! We are very thankful about that, seeing children dying from AIDS is so sad, they all got the infection through birth, their mother was HIV+ and gave the virus to their baby.  Because of the good prevention the government of Uganda set up towards the mother to child infection, are there not many babies born with HIV anymore.

We lost a small baby today. You never get used to it... It is always so sad and painful to see a little baby, like Sekundina, fighting for her life, not able to get enough air in... It all started yesterday, everything was normal, she got a bath and was fed in the morning. But  2 hours later, when she was due for her next feeding, she had difficulties with breathing. They checked her saturation (level of oxygen in the blood) and it was low. They put her on the oxygen machine and the doctor form the clinic next  to us was called. he checked, they took some blood. he listened to her lungs and prescribed  IV medication. During the day her saturation was going up to normal again, but the difficulty in her breathing remained. Joanne, one of our medical team, stayed the whole night with her. In the morning she was a bit stable, untill she crashed again, without a reason. Her saturation was dropping and even when she got extra IV medication, it dropped untill she slipped away...

Two days ago, this little girl was brought to Amecet by the Police. There a quite a number of small lodges in Soroti, where you can sleep when you miss your bus or so. They are very simple. And in one of those lodges, the cleaning lady went to clean the rooms which were occupied during the night. In one of the small rooms, she found this little girl... We think she is 1,5 years old abandoned by her mother. The Police is involved, and they found pictures of the mother on the security camera of a neighbouring shop. We call her Esther, for now. She is doing well, eat and drinks and even sleeps without many problems. We just heard today that the police arrested the mother. We might be able to find the relatives now.

In the last 8 days, we received 3 preterm babies, very small, very weak. You see them on this picture, the oldest  is at the left , she is 5 weeks old, than in the middle the baby of 3 weeks old and at the right the baby of 2 weeks old. Two of them are fed by NG tube, because they are too weak to drink themselves. Let me tell a bit more about them....