Global Ministries Shares News from Las Memorias Hostel in Mexico
Las Memorias Hostel is a non-profit association founded in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico January 4, 1999. Its mission is to provide quality care, human compassion, and warmth to people living with HIV/AIDS. Las Memorias also carries out educational activities for the prevention of HIV/AIDS. Las Memorias Hostel serves every type of person no matter their social status, religion or gender, sexual orientation or identity, whether they are immigrants or from other states in Mexico and rely on a framework of care with dignity with people living with HIV/AIDS. Las Memorias provides housing assistance, food, medicine, transportation to health institutions, and self-help sessions to its clients and residents.
In recent years, Las Memorias installed and implemented a solar panel grid for its facilities which has allowed it to have a sustainable and reliable power supply as well as shift funds used to pay for electricity to patient care.
As part of the medical care Las Memorias provides to its clients, it is keenly aware of the threat that tuberculosis poses to those living with HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS weakens an individual’s immune system making them much more susceptible to tuberculosis (TB) and making it more likely that latent TB can advance into an aggressive case. Worldwide, tuberculosis is one of the leading causes of death among people living with HIV. For this reason, Las Memorias sees treating TB as a priority. Additionally, Las Memorias also sees the treatment of TB as a priority because of the particular risk for TB in its geographic area. The state where Las Memorias is located, Baja California, has the highest number of cases of TB and the highest mortality rate from TB in Mexico.
As Las Memorias seeks to improve the level of treatment and care they provide, Las Memorias is excited to have begun work on a TB treatment wing which will improve the level of care it can provide to its patients, for whom, TB poses a major risk. Las Memorias has begun construction on the first stage of a new wing for TB treatment. So far, the foundation, floors, walls have all been finished for this building.