Malawi's Crisis

As featured in the Globe and Mail Online in August 2010

Coffin shops such as shown here in Zomba, Malawi are a reminder of the ongoing human toll of the AIDS pandemic. This coffin is designed for a child.

A health-care nurse in rural Malawi assigns numbers to several hundred "health passports" belonging to HIV-positive patients who have come for their monthly medication and counselling

A Malawian health care worker weighs an HIV-positive woman at a rural clinic prior to providing her with counselling and her monthly allotment of antiretroviral medication as hundreds wait their turn.

These people would all be dead whispered a suddenly choked-up James Fraser, co-founder of Dignitas International, while reviewing the status of HIV-positive patients now on treatment at a rural clinic in Malawi's Zomba district.

HIV-positive women attend a prevention of mother-to-child clinic at a rural clinic in Malawi. The PMTC program is designed to prevent an HIV-positive mother from passing the virus on to her child.

Ruth, 48, a Malawian health care nurse working for Dignitas International, shares a laugh with HIV-positive mothers who are attending a prevention of mother-to-child clinic (PMTC) jointly run by Dignitas International and Malawi's Ministry of Health.

Ruth, 48, a Malawian health care nurse working for Dignitas International, provides AIDS counselling and female condoms to a young woman in Zomba, Malawi during World HIV/AIDS day.

A Malawian man prepares for a blood test, for many a first and difficult step in coming to terms with the country's HIV/AIDS epidemic.