Those who can't find space inside under the tin roof sit on the dusty ground outside the doors, hoping for a chance to slip inside when the guard isn't looking. Crying babies are nursed, while the sick, the hungry and the pregnant wait patiently for their turn to approach the registration desk and get a number.

I stand in the corner with my good friend and nurse, Sister Violet, and together we survey the scene. It is a familiar one, a hot and dusty mass of humanity. We try making a few spot diagnoses from a distance. That kid on the bench clearly has malaria, and that one over there is badly malnourished. Just here, sitting on the floor and leaning up against the wall, is a clear case of advanced HIV/AIDS, a man with multiple sores and reduced to little more than skin and bones.

Two members of the PLWA club (that is, 'The People Living With AIDS" club) stand up and loudly speak out their testimony to the waiting throng. "We were almost dead," they say, "but astonishingly came back to life, by taking antiretroviral medicines, and now look at us. We're alive!" The message they tell is clear. "If you or your loved one is sick and dying from the disease that we all know and hate, then overcome the stigma and the shame and the embarrassment that you have, and come and get a test just like we did! Then you too can get treated. You can live, too!"

Today, (Dec. 1) on World AIDS day, I recall that over my last 12 years of living, working and treating the sick in Malawi -- that little country in the South Eastern part of Africa -- the incidence of HIV/AIDS has plummeted in our part of it from 24 per cent to 14 per cent of the population. Now that is a success story and the success is still being written. More people are surviving and fewer dying . . . still far too many, of course, but at least the trend looks good!

We haven't yet won the battle with AIDS, but control is being achieved.

How I wish we had more doctors. When I arrived on the scene 12 years ago, I was only the 94th registered doctor in the entire country. Can you imagine? Just 94 doctors for 12 million people. No wonder that the poor nurses and their assistants claim to be overworked!

Diagnosing, prescribing, dispensing, suturing, operating, delivering babies -- if you need it, they do it. There's no one else -- and hardly any hospitals either.

With the indispensable help of a few friends from Canada, I built my own hospital on the shores of Lake Malawi over 10 years ago, putting up a wall to keep the hippos out, and waited for the patients to come. Come they did! In their hundreds every day. A little food, a little medicine, a bit of money from Canada and a lot of love goes a long way.

Back in the outpatients' waiting room, a child goes into convulsions. My favourite nurse Violet takes a quick look and tells me "cerebral malaria, I think," and takes some blood from a pale and dirty little arm, sending it off to John Matike in the lab for a test. John has become a fine and reliable lab technician despite the fact that he started out working for us as a floor sweeper. Within minutes, the result comes back, "severe malaria and severe anemia with a hemoglobin of only 2.8 per cent." Back in Canada, I never have seen a hemoglobin anywhere near that low. I didn't actually think it was compatible with life.

We start intravenous treatment for the child lying on the floor and the convulsions stop. The I/V quinine starts working, too. "Maybe this child will live," we say to each other. Without treatment, undoubtedly, he would have died. No question about it.

Nelson, my nursing assistant, and I stroll up and down the central aisle talking to the people, myself in English and Nelson translating into Chichewa.

Here's a fact that I find most astonishing. Last year Lifeline Malawi -- the organization I founded -- treated over 200,000 patients. Pretty basic treatment, of course, but it has saved many thousands of lives. The money, and the medicines, have come from Canada, mostly.

Thank you, fellow Canucks. You're awesome!

Please, keep the support coming. Don't stop. I stand up now and speak for people who are unable to speak for themselves.

Is the work worthwhile? Yes, it is. Do we do it well? Yes, we do, most of the time, very well indeed. And are we going to carry on, to the very best of our ability? With your help Canada, yes, we are. Yes, we are indeed. Please help us save the lives of the warm-hearted people of Malawi. If you knew them as I do, you would love them and help them.

Dr. Chris Brooks, who used to practise medicine in Calgary, is the founder and president emeritus of Lifeline Malawi. www.lifelinemalawi.com