“If you’re doing your job well as a physician, you know and love your patients. And that’s where the trust comes from. And that’s where their health and wellbeing can grow from.”


studying medicine at McMaster University, she first got interested in HIV when she did an elective with the infectious disease team at Dalhousie University—which, coinci- dentally, was the team that gave the first dose of AZT to a patient on the east coast. As the most junior member of the team at the time, she remembers sitting by this patient’s bedside whenever she had a spare moment. “I was mesmerized by this man’s grief, isolation and despair,” Dr. Zajdlik remembers. “I wanted to understand more.” So when she returned to Ontario, she gained as much experience as she could working at HIV clinics in Hamilton. And when she established her family practice in Guelph, she knocked on the door of the AIDS Committee of Guelph and asked if they needed help managing their HIV patients. “They looked at me like I had two


Community-Based Medicine


AS THE FOUNDER OF THE MAASAI CENTRE FOR LOCAL, REGIONAL AND GLOBAL HEALTH AND THE BRACELET OF HOPE CAMPAIGN, DR. ANNE-MARIE ZAJDLIK HAS PROVEN THAT THE SUPPORT OF HER COMMUNITY CAN MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE.


When Dr. Anne-Marie Zajdlik first vis- ited the Tsepong Clinic in the summer of 2006—one of the busiest public HIV/ AIDS treatment centres in the Kingdom of Lesotho in sub-Saharan Africa—it was as close to warfare as she had ever seen. There were hoards of people waiting for treatment, and every day, the triage nurse would find three or four people who were dying in the waiting room. Often these people had been left alone, so Dr. Zajdlik says the entire medical staff would take a moment to gath- er around and support the dying person,


singing hymns or stroking the person’s hair. Only three years later in 2009, when Dr.


Zajdlik returned to the same clinic, the scene had changed dramatically. By this time, anti- retroviral therapy had become accessible, and when it was combined with good medical care, it produced nothing short of a miracle. “They weren’t sick,” explains Dr. Zajdlik, happily. “I saw two people who looked unwell, but the rest were anxious to get their prescriptions and go home.” Dr. Zajdlik is a family doctor and HIV physician based in Guelph, Ontario. After


8 : Produced by Verge Magazine, www.vergemagazine.com


heads,” she says, “because doctors didn’t come forward asking to treat HIV in those days.” In September 2005, the Maasai Centre for Local, Regional and Global Health opened in Guelph—named after the first HIV-negative baby she delivered to HIV- positive parents. The clinic was made pos- sible thanks to Dr. Zajdlik’s hard work, but also with tremendous help and support from the surrounding community, which was actively involved in fundraising. In addition to her family practice, Dr. Zajdlik now runs the Maasai Centre in conjunction


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