Peninsula club lending hand to clinic in Africa

from Inside Bay Area

Southern California doctor sets up HIV/AIDS facility to help Malawians
By Kyveli Diener,

REDWOOD CITY — There's far more happening in Malawi than Madonna's high-profile adoption scandal.

In this relatively small country in southeastern Africa, approximately 80,000 out of 12 million Malawian citizens die of AIDS every year, according to the World Health Organization.

As many turn their back on this beautiful yet seemingly hopeless country, where a high mortality rate means children are often raised by other children, one man has been working for nearly eight years to make a difference.

Dr. Perry Jansen, 46, moved to Malawi in late 2000 and founded the nonprofit Partners in Hope Medical Center in the country's capital, Lilongwe. His free clinic provides treatment, counseling and testing for Malawians with HIV and AIDS, while working with local schools to provide education on AIDS prevention.

At the Sequoia Club on Tuesday, the self-proclaimed "spokesperson for the Malawian people" said "zikomo kwambiri" — Chichewan for "thank you very much" — to the Redwood City Rotary Club for the work and funding of its international committee, which has allowed the clinic to buy a blood analyzer and an X-ray machine.

"Those people are so much in need, and we have so much," international committee Chairman Rodney Toews said of poverty and disease in Malawi. "Rather than say it's too overwhelming, I (ask myself), 'What can I do?'"

Jansen asked himself the same question nearly a decade ago. After he received his medical training at Penn State University and his tropical medicine training at Johns Hopkins University, the Huntington Beach native went to Malawi with his wife, Brenda, andtheir children, Nate and Erin, to pursue a career in overseas medicine. During his first four years in the country, he worked on the grounds of a Bible college in Lilongwe.

He focused his interest in the treatment of HIV/AIDS with the foundation of Partners in Hope. Though he was shocked by the amount of death he witnessed — 60 percent of his patients died shortly after treatment began — Jansen was still adamant about making a difference for the people of his new home.

"If you look at the whole problem, you can sometimes feel powerless," he said. "A lot of people still die, but every day, I get to see a couple dozen people that wouldn't be alive if (the clinic) weren't there. The number of lives we can touch along the way is what it's really about."

Jansen's life was touched in turn by one of his patients, a

6-month-old orphan named Olivia who was brought to the center by her grandmother. Olivia's mother had died a month earlier, and her grandmother couldn't care for the starving baby. "We couldn't see her go to an orphanage, so we adopted her."

With financial support from a host of U.S. churches, Jansen expanded his clinic in 2005, buying and renovating an abandoned building. Jansen also has received financial support from Santa Monica's Westside Christian Fellowship church, which provided money for antiretroviral medication, and the Malawian government, which gave $350,000 to the clinic in its first year.

The Rotary Club has given aid to Malawi on several occasions. Toews said donations helped rescue 30 babies from fields where they had been abandoned by parents who couldn't afford to care for them. In another project, they taught 9- and 10-year-old orphans to care for younger children around them.

The high number of children orphaned by AIDS means that 50 percent of Malawians are under the age of 15. With the loss of people who are meant to pass on the culture to younger generations, there is a declining sense of order, Jansen said.

The club, which had previously bought the clinic a

$20,000 blood analyzer, again chose Jansen's Malawian hospital as its international cause this year and was given $5,000 as seed money. Club members went on to raise $28,260 with the help of Peninsula Covenant Church. International committee member Tom Delfs estimates that through various activities the committee raised $65,000 for the cause.

Jansen said he feels "overflowing gratitude" to the club. He has been living in Santa Monica for the past eight months, working with University of California, Los Angeles, to arrange funding for a research laboratory.