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Crucial understanding
“You are not alone, the club is thinking of you”
The FC Barcelona expedition has arrived in Swaziland, where Joan Laporta has told people affected by HIV/AIDS that they are very much in the football club’s thoughts.
The Barça president arrived on Tuesday in Manzini, the second biggest city in the country, as part
of the joint project involving FC Barcelona and Unicef. Swaziland is the first country to benefit
from the alliance, where one and a half million euros from the first year of the project are to be
spent on worthy causes.
After travelling from Johannesburg to Manzini, arriving at 13.40, the touring party was met
at the airport by Jama Gulaid, the Unicef representative in Swaziland.
Visit to Shewula clinic
President Laporta was then taken to Shewula, a town of 10,000 people,
where he was shown the facilities at a clinic. Thanks to Barça’s contribution, the mechanisms
for detecting and preventing the transmission of HIV/AIDS from mother to child have been vastly
improved at the centre.
The main problem in Swaziland is the existence of so many children orphaned by the disease.
The population is now more aware than it was before, more women take regular checks for HIV before
getting pregnant and more people are using the facilities on offer at the clinic in Shewula. What
Barça has achieved at the centre includes a new module for looking after patients in more intimate
surroundings.
Barça’s social responsibilities
Joan Laporta was very proud to see what Barça has achieved. “I am
here to learn about your situation” he said. “To learn from your friendship and
strength to fight, despite the problems you have. I am very proud that our agreement with Unicef
has enabled us to develop our social responsibilities … our team has more than 108 years of
history and our aim is to help with a project to support children. You are not alone, there is a
club that is thinking of you. Our fight against AIDS will be a success”.
The president then added that “our players don’t just play football. They also
want to say that children are not alone.”
