Life could not get much worse for Ngassa. Eleven years old. Parents dead from AIDS.  In the hospital with a severe bone infection. He had no one to cry to, except God. But God heard the cries of this young boy and sent help.  

That help was Hanneke Cost-Budde, the Africa Inland Church Tanzania’s HIV/AIDS coordinator who regularly visits the wards at the local hospital to visit clients from the AIDS program.

Simply, he had no one. Ngassa caught her attention because he seemed to have no one caring for him.  She discovered he did have an aunt, but she was a scarce resource due to urgent responsibilities to her own family.  Simply, he had no one.  So Hanneke started bringing him food regularly. 

She discovered he had been in that hospital bed for three years suffering from tuberculosis of the bones.  In one leg he had developed osteomelytis, an infection deep in the bone.  The hospital doctors despaired of saving the leg and were preparing to amputate it above the knee, which would have doomed him to a life of begging in the streets. 

Hanneke thought there surely must be some better way to treat his problem.

She contacted Dr. Tim Mead at Bethany Crippled Children’s Hospital at Kijabe, Kenya, which is a CURE International hospital.  Dr. Mead was ready and willing to take a look at Ngassa, but this meant getting him from Shinyanga, Tanzania, to Kijabe, Kenya, hundreds of miles away.  AIM AIR and one of their Cessna 206 aircraft came to the rescue.

At Kijabe, Dr. Mead felt a procedure to suck out the infection could be done, but first Ngassa had to be given a special diet to strengthen and build up his emaciated body.  This completed, the missionary doctor performed the procedure.  It was painful, but it saved his leg.

During the months of recovery at Bethany Crippled Children’s Hospital, Ngassa grew strong, made friends, played with toys, watched videos, and started smiling again.

Then came the day to be discharged from the hospital.  He was placed into the care of AIC’s Kajiado (Kenya) Children’s Home, where children with disabilities receive physical therapy and care as they recover from surgeries.  There, AIM’s Jennifer Palmer, a physical therapist, helped him strengthen his legs which were weakened after three years of lying in a hospital bed.

He was even allowed to join other children at the AIC primary school next door to the children’s home.  It was the first time he had ever been to school in his eleven years.

Today, he is back in Shinyanga, Tanzania, staying with Hanneke and two other orphans she has taken in until suitable homes can be found.  As a result he can continue his education as well as receive proper care from the debilitating condition that almost robbed him of his leg.

Ngassa is just one of the many, many children that receive help from Hanneke and her team at the AICT’s HIV/AIDS program.  The program offers voluntary counseling and testing for AIDS, home-based care for those sick with AIDS, food aid, shoes, school supplies for orphans, and other services that help alleviate some of the suffering caused by the AIDS epidemic.
 

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