- Book Launch
- UNAIDS Global Report
- CAMR
- Falling Leaves Run Oct/2011
- McMaster - Jun 2011
- Go Red - May 2011
- Skate & Donate Photos - Apr 2011
- Tsosa Molota
- 18th Aids Conference & News Articles
- Dying For Drugs
- The Lazarus Effect
- Gala 2010 Thank You
- A Closer Walk
- 2010 Ruby Award
- The next phase begins...
- IWD 2010
- Red Ribbon Gala 2010
- Order
- Reach out with Red Rose
- Kids make all the difference
- Red Ribbon Gala Success
- Cambridge, Ont. Launch
- Bracelets now at WLU!
- Waterloo BoH Kick-Off
- UW launches BoH website
- Westvale Public School
- Student Reach joins BoH
- 100 Huntley Street
- Group Travels To Lesotho
- Tšepong reaches 10,000
- Headshaving Event
- Condition For A Global Miracle July/2010
- Bieber Fever
- Red Ribbon Gala
2010 Ruby Award
On the evening of Wednesday, April 7 2010, Dr Anne-Marie Zajdlik was present at a dinner meeting of the Guelph Soroptimists International Club held at the Symposium Cafe. Governor Bonnie Domonchuk is shown here presenting Anne-Marie with the Ruby Award.
Dr. Anne- Marie Zajdlik is a family physician, regional HIV Specialist and mother. Dr. Zajdlik was born and raised in South Western Ontario. She graduated from the Family Medicine Residency Program at McMaster University in 1990. In the fall of 1987 as a third year medical student, Dr. Zajdlik was part of the Infectious Disease team at Dalhousie University Medical Centre in Halifax Nova Scotia, that treated the first HIV positive patient to receive the new medication AZT on the East Coast. Inspired by the strength of this patient who was dying alone of this disease, Dr. Zajdlik returned to McMaster and acquired an expertise in the treatment and management of HIV/AIDS.
After opening her family medicine practice in July of 1990 in Guelph, Ontario, Dr. Zajdlik began treating HIV positive patients from the region. In the fall of 2003, as the only remaining HIV treating physician in the area, she began the process of establishing and opening the province of Ontario’s 14th provincially funded HIV/AIDS clinic. The Masai Centre for Local, Regional and Global Health, (named in honour of the healthy, HIV negative baby born to HIV positive Ethiopian parents, delivered by Dr. Zajdlik, now cares for over 200 HIV positive patients. The Masai Centre has since opened a satellite clinic in the neighbouring city of Waterloo.
Inspired by the birth of Masai and the plight of 15 million AIDS orphans in Africa, Dr. Zajdlik launched a campaign in December of 2005, asking her community to assist her in raising $1 million for the first HIV/AIDS clinic in Lesotho, Africa established by the Ontario Hospital Association and the OHAfrica project. After more than 400 speaking engagements, the Bracelet of Hope Campaign has raised $1.35 million, a portion of which has sustained the Tsepong HIV/AIDS clinic in Lesotho. This clinic is treating more than 11,000 patients in the tiny African Kingdom of Lesotho. Bracelet of Hope supports several other projects in the area.
In the spring of 2006, University Students from the University of Guelph, motivated by Dr. Zajdlik’s efforts, pledged to raise $100,000 of the initial campaign goal of $ 1 million. To do so, they hired a group of Zulu women crafters in Eshowe, South Africa at the Inina Craft Agency, to make 5,000 beaded red and white bracelets that the students sold on campus for $5 each. When Dr. Zajdlik was made aware of these efforts, and with the permission of these students, Anne-Marie adopted the Bracelet of Hope as her own and launched a nation-wide campaign focused on seeing a Bracelet of Hope on the wrist of every Canadian with the goal of ending the AIDS pandemic in Lesotho.
The Bracelet of Hope Campaign has since purchased over 300,000 bracelets from the Inina Craft Agency allowing this group of crafters to hire over 100 African women. Each woman can make 50 bracelets daily and in so doing, earn 100 Rand in a region of South Africa where the average daily wage is 20 Rand. Assisted by The Bracelet of Hope Campaign, Inina the surrounding community have been transformed. The partnership between Bracelet of Hope, Inina and the University of Kwazulu-Natal won the International Partnership Network’s Global Best Award for Africa in 2008 and recently, the Inina Craft Agency won KZN’s most successful entrepreneur of the year award (October 2009). Dr. Zajdlik was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Guelph in June of 2008.
Dr. Zajdlik is now an international speaker and AIDS activist who continues to be driven by her passion for the HIV infected patient and her deep love for the women and children of Africa whose lives have been devastated by this disease. She has gained the support of three surrounding communities who have launched campaigns of their own to join in this deserving cause. She has inspired high school and university students across the country.
There is also a student-run group dedicated to providing students with humanitarian opportunities, "Student Reach International", who have partnered with the Bracelet of Hope Campaign and are now working towards getting bracelet campaigns started at schools, universities and colleges across Canada.
Anne-Marie has inspired the National Union of Public and General Employees and Rotary International. She is a sought after speaker and writer.
In her words, "There are 300,000 people with HIV/AIDS in Lesotho. We contributed significantly towards saving the lives of over 11,000. We are working with the Government of Lesotho to assist in their efforts to provide testing to all and treatment to those infected, with the ultimate result of end that AIDS pandemic in Lesotho. In so doing, we will set an example of international cooperation that could see the end of this pandemic globally. A bracelet on the wrist of every Canadian, and one country AIDS free.”