Annual Report 2009

The work of the Brotherhood of Blessed Gérard and of Blessed Gérard's Care Centre in the year 2009 were aimed at faithfully continuing, consolidating and strengthening our existing projects and services.

A major instrument towards that goal was quality control and quality improvement with the aim to achieve full accreditation by the Council for health Services Accreditation of South Africa (COHSASA). That is an equivalent to a five-star-rating, which everybody knows from the ranking of hotels.
We have successfully completed Phase 1 of the accreditation process on 15.10.2009 which brought as in important step forward on our course to achieve full accreditation.

The outstanding events of 2009 were:

On 1 January 2009 Father Gérard was appointed  Caritas Director of the Diocese of Eshowe.

On 7 February 2009 top officials of the government of the U.S.A. visited Blessed Gérard's Care Centre:
Jose Rafael Morales MD, FACOG, the Chief Medical Officer of the Global HIV/AIDS Program and Rodrigo Boccanera, MPH, the Public Health Analyst from the Department of Health & Human Services of the Government of the U.S.A., Celicia Serenata from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Johan Viljoen, the Project Coordinator of the HAART Programme of the South African Catholic Bishops' Conference came for a site visit to see our Care Centre and hear about its impact through our HAART programme.
They were very impressed and expressed with emotion that seeing the success of the PEPFAR Programme through the impact of our HAART Programme makes them proud and makes all the hard work so worthwhile.
Our visitors presented us with a plaque expressing that "This project is proudly supported by the American people through PEPFAR". We are most grateful for the substantial support of PEPFAR for our HAART Programme.
Johan Viljoen commented on the visit: "Thank you for a wonderful visit on Saturday. Everybody was highly impressed with the work being done at Blessed Gerard."
Rodrigo Boccanera commented: "It was an incredible insightful visit and it is truly a model site."

Between 2. March and 23 June 2009 we built a convent for a Sisters' Community of the Benedictines of Twasana within Blessed Gérard's Care Centre. Four sisters are supposed to move into our centre. One of them, Sr. Edith Zulu OSB, has been with us already since 5 December 2008, Sr. Conradine Mkhize OSB, joined us on 29 August and two more sisters are to follow soon.
This necessitated creating appropriate accommodation. We have converted a previous huge store room on the first floor of the Care Centre into a flat with four bedrooms and a shared lounge/kitchenette. Father Aquilin Mpanza blessed the Convent on 23 June 2009 out our celebration of St. John's Feast.

From 24. - 26. March Johannes Freiherr Heereman and Dr. Marie-Theres Benner performed an audit of our organisation for the Order of Malta. The audit team was very impressed about our good progress, our organisation and work and left us very content.

The Board of Directors & Extraordinary Meeting of the Council of the Dedicated Members of the Brotherhood of Blessed Gérard decided in their Meeting on 2 April 2009 a major restructuring of our entire organisational structure:
The major decision was to include Blessed Gérard's Relief Fund, Blessed Gérard's Bursary Fund, Blessed Gérard's Poor Sick Fund, Blessed Gérard's Malnutrition Clinic, Blessed Gérard's Pre-Primary School & Crèche, Blessed Gérard's First Aid & Emergency Service and Blessed Gérard's Disaster Relief Project into Blessed Gérard's Care Centre.
This became possible through a change in South African tax law, i.e. that all our charitable purposes are now tax deductible activities within South Africa.
That makes Blessed Gérard's Care Centre now the all inclusive operational Branch of the Brotherhood of Blessed Gérard in Mandeni and we hope and pray that other branches may develop in different places in due course of time.
See the updated organisation chart.


On 23. September 2009 The Order of Malta issued a postage stamp featuring Blessed Gérard's Pre-Primary School & Crèche.
See: Blessed Gérard's Pre-Primary School and Crèche - Postage Stamp of the Order of Malta

Personnel

Employees

In the course of professionalising  our work we had to create many more vacancies for professional staff. Meanwhile we employ 86 members of staff (including the two nuns). 24 of these were hired in the past year 2009. That means a 39% increase of staff in 2009! Doing so we have taken on a huge financial responsibility, which we will only be able to maintain in a sustainable way, if we intensify our fund-raising efforts greatly.

Visitors

In 2009 we had many nice visitors. Amongst these were Dr. Vicco von Arnim and his family (3.1.2009), Susanne Neckermann (13. - 16.1.2009), Harry Hine (6.2. - 22.3. und 21.10. - 17.11.2009), Peter and Frau Anne Hehl (17.2. - 1.3.2009), Abbot Rhabanus Petri OSB (15.4.2009) and Mechthilde Lagleder (5. - 23.8.2009).

Public Relations

We entered significant new paths of public relations and fund-raising in the year 2009. "Social Networks" have developed and became a new forum, which we must not disregard. Otherwise we may miss the train of communication opportunities which is definitely shifting fast towards electronic media.

Therefore you will find us now
since 15.1.2009 at betterplace.org : http://de.betterplace.org/organisations/bbg
since 23.1.2009 at XING: http://www.xing.com/group-33065.6c5a0a
since 18.2.2009 at Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=56437476230
since 5.3.2009 at Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1833474
and since 14.9.2009 at KathSpace: http://kathspace.com/community/PaterGerhard

Since 8.9.2009 we have our own BLOG at http://fathergerard.blogspot.com/

TV, Radio and printed media contributions (even if these are meanwhile already considered rather "traditional" media) you will find at:

The outstanding media contribution in 2009 was:
Vatican Radio: Interview about Blessed Gérard's Centre in Mandeni, South Africa


 

The Brotherhood of Blessed Gérard celebrated

15 years of service of Blessed Gérard's HIV/AIDS Education Programme


10 years of service of Blessed Gérard's First Aid and Emergency Service

5 years of service of Blessed Gérard's Hospice - HAART Programme - Highly Active Anti Retroviral Therapy

Detailed information about these jubilees and the programmes is available at  the report about Blessed Gérard's Feast 2009

Membership statistics

(as on 22 December 2009)

    Increase 2009
1184 active members 13 %
550 financial supporters 2 %
370 spiritual supporters 3 %
2104 members in total 9 %
Statistics by Key Performance Indicators 2009
Patients receiving ARVs by December 2009   225
HIV positive patients who do not need ARVs yet   78
VCT (Voluntary Counselling and Testing) done   222
Patients admitted into hospice   426
Patients who passed away in our hospice   163
Hospice average occupancy rate   86%
Home visits by HAART therapeutic counsellors   2 180
Home visits by Home care team   2 020
Consultations done by our social worker   1 113
Children in Children's home   41
Children who joined our Pre-Primary School and Crèche 76
Bursaries awarded in 2009   31

In 2009   Accumulated Statistics 1992-2009 Increase
285   new inpatients were admitted to hospice 2746 12%
503   home care patients were added 2517 25%
504   patients were transported by the home care team 2290 28%
145   patients counselled 1256 13%
17   patients transferred 649 3%
202   day- and outpatients 920 28%
177   HAART patients were added 765 30%
12   paediatric patients were added 465 3%
14   First Aid patients 317 5%
6   emergency patients 259 2%
34   social cases 354 11%
    Training    
151   home carers 756 25%

 

 

ARV / HAART Patients = Number of AIDS patients in the treatment phase, i.e. receiving Highly-Active-Anti-Retroviral-Therapy (HAART) through our HAART Clinic.

VCT Sum = Total number of patients having undergone Voluntary-Counselling-and-Testing for HIV Infection.

Home Visits Sum = Total number of patients having received adherence monitoring and nutrition support visits by our Therapeutic Counsellors for HAART.

 

Not every "visit" is the same. There are just visits to supervise the home-based-care provided by the family and visits to assess and then transfer a patient to our hospice, a clinic or hospital (including transport by our ambulance).

See: A Day in the Bush with the Nursing Team

 

Our Social Worker, Miss Hlengiwe Dube, is involved primarily in our Hospice and Children's Home, but is also involved in our Malnutrition Clinic, Relief Fund, Bursary Fund and Poor-Sick-Fund.

Our 2009 top donors' charts

We thank all our donors and mention our 25 most generous benefactors

  1. Bruderschaft des Seligen Gerhard e.V. - Neuburg / Germany (and all our benefactors who made their donations to us through their account)

  2. South African Catholic Bishops' Conference (AIDS Office) via Catholic Relief Services Consortium through PEPFAR from U.S. Government

  3. Benedictine Mission House - Schuyler, NE / U.S.A. (and all their and our benefactors who sent their donations for us to them)

  4. Missionsprokura - St. Ottilien / Germany (and all our benefactors who made their donations to us through their account)

  5. Nardini Sisters - Mallersdorf / Germany

  6. Order of Malta (Canadian Association) (and all our benefactors who sent their donations for us through them)

  7. Mundo Compartido · Shared World Austria - Linz / Austria (and all their benefactors who sent donations for us to them)

  8. Diocese of Hildesheim / Germany

  9. St. Peter's Parish - Manching / Germany via Päpstliches Missionswerk der Kinder (and all their benefactors through Aktion Dreikönigssingen)

  10. Malteser Hilfsdienst e.V. - Landsberg / Germany

  11. Initiative gegen Armut (INGEAR) - Zeilarn / Germany

  12. Vilseck gibt Hoffnung e.V. -Vilseck / Germany (and all their benefactors)

  13. Nampak - Johannesburg / South Africa

  14. Order of Malta (British Association) (and all our benefactors who sent their donations for us through them)

  15. Mrs. Anderson - Durban / South Africa

  16. Malteser Hilfsdienst e.V. - Traunstein / Germany

  17. Andreas Schmeller Gymnasium - Nabburg / Germany

  18. Fritz Manz Family - Pettendorf / Germany

  19. Malteser Hilfsdienst e.V. Diocesan Office - Munich / Germany

  20. Rotary Club Porta Praetoria - Regensburg / Germany

  21. Frà Ludwig Hoffmann von Rumerstein - Innsbruck / Austria

  22. Catholic Church - Nittenau / Germany

  23. Lions Club - Neuburg / Germany

  24. SAPPI - Mandeni / South Africa

  25. Mr. Christoph Deutsch - Dresden / Germany

This page is part of the Newsletter No. 29 of the Brotherhood of Blessed Gérard



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This page was last updated on Tuesday, 15 January 2013 12:49:50