“Siempre Unidos is really a safe place for people to be,” said Honduras Executive Director, Pascual Torres, during his recent visit to the San Francisco Bay Area. “Our patients face so many challenges – poverty, job discrimination, unsupportive families. Of course we must tend to their mental health needs.” Among people living with HIV, theRead more
Monthly Update
Carolina (a pseudonym) is a transgender woman in her late 20’s living with HIV. She speaks lovingly of her mother, now deceased, and describes how mama signaled acceptance of her gender change when she brought her home a dress. She seems reluctantly reconciled to discrimination, as when people on the bus move away from her.Read more
Our patients remember the circumstances of learning their HIV test results. One woman had her blood drawn at the factory where she worked. She didn’t know the purpose of the test. Thirty minutes later, the nurse told her she was HIV-positive and had a month to live. A male patient learned his HIV test resultsRead more
Hello, It is a pleasure to greet you. I am a young Honduran man of 22 years, a college student and live in the city of Tela on the Caribbean coast. For more than a year, I have begun to feel HIV symptoms and have never visited the doctor because I am afraid. I amRead more
There’s power in love to help and heal when nothing else can. There’s power in love to lift up and liberate when nothing else will. There’s power in love to show us the way to live. From The Most Rev. Michael Curry’s sermon at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in May.Read more
“Tina” lives at the end of a dirt road in a one-room house she rents for $21/month. It has a bed that’s elevated due to flooding, slats through which the daylight shows, a dirt floor, fridge and stove. Tina has drawn water from the river and is washing dishes outside when we approach. She isRead more
Dear Friends, We are pleased to share our 2017 Annual Report detailing our accomplishments in providing HIV and primary care services to people in Honduras. As you will read, we completed our three-year 90-90-90 Major Gifts Campaign, received perfect government scores on our quality of care, and reached high-poverty communities lacking in HIV education andRead more
“Today is Father’s Day in Honduras,” Pascual Torres, our Honduras Executive Director, wrote last month. “It is not celebrated with the same reverence and joy as Mother’s Day. Nevertheless, the female personnel of Siempre Unidos will make a “comida típica” (traditional meal) in our honor. Quite a nice treat, do you not agree?” We doRead more
“My father told me that had he known that I would be queer, it would have been better for me to have been born a dog,” a 27-year-old patient told Pascual when he first met him. German (a pseudonym) went on to say, “My life has always been one of rejection due to my sexualRead more
Three years ago, we received the valentine card seen here from the daughter of an HIV-positive husband and wife. At the time, the young woman was 17 years old and supported by the Santa Barbara-based e3 Girls Education Fund providing tuition, school uniforms and supplies. Today, the writer has realized her dream to be aRead more
