Laying the groundwork: the first three months of My Pill Box, My Health!

A GILO team member speaks with health workers about the pill-box initiative.

In Uganda, an estimated 150,000 children live with HIV. Antiretroviral therapy works, but only if it's taken consistently, and for a child juggling school, family and the fear of being found out, that consistency is hard to maintain.

pill

My Pill Box, My Health! is Mildmay's first Partner-led Small Project Fund project, developed with GILO Young Positives Foundation, a youth-led organisation of young people living with HIV, to help schoolchildren in Kassanda District manage their treatment with dignity.

Three months in, pill boxes haven't been handed out yet, because this phase is about groundwork: the unglamorous work that determines whether everything that follows succeeds or stalls.

The GILO team secured support from district leaders, then mapped all 10 health facilities providing ART services across Kassanda District. They followed that with engagement visits to each one, meeting the health workers who will be central to making this project work day-to-day.

GILO staff engaging with health workers at a Kassanda District clinic.

Those visits were revealing. Health workers were candid about the barriers families face: some children travel long distances to reach a clinic, facilities are short-staffed, and infrastructure is limited. At the same time, health workers were genuinely enthusiastic about the pill-box approach itself, recognising it as a practical tool that could ease pressure on services already stretched thin.

 GILO team members discussing adherence challenges during the project's first quarter.

That combination, honest about the challenges and genuinely engaged with the solution, is exactly what a project like this needs from its frontline partners. Partnerships are now in place with health facilities, district authorities and education officials, which means the project has the local backing it needs to move from planning into practice.

The next phase turns to the children themselves: identifying beneficiaries, engaging schools directly, and formalising the district-level partnerships that will keep this project on track.

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Projects like this only reach places that are genuinely hard to reach because our donors make it possible. My Pill Box, My Health! still needs funding for its second and third years to see this work through.

My Pill Box, My Health!