FARMINGTON – Franklin Memorial Hospital will host a benefit dinner and discussion for the Mission at the Eastward South African Partnership at 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 30, in the Bass Room at Franklin Memorial Hospital.

The keynote speaker will be Paul Zintl, MPA, chief operating officer of Partners in Health, a nonprofit health organization based at Harvard Medical School, with a presence in Latin America, the Caribbean, Russia and the United States. Zintl will speak on “Rwanda: New AIDS Initiative, a Model from PIH.”

Traditional South African cuisine will be featured along with music by the Stratton Steel Drum Band.

The organization’s innovative projects include combating AIDS and women’s health problems, groundbreaking tuberculosis treatment and developing health policy initiatives on a global scale.

The story of Partners in Health and its founder, Dr. Paul Farmer, is described in the best selling book, “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Tracy Kidder. Five copies of the book, signed by Kidder and Farmer, will be raffled at the conclusion of the event.

Local physician Dr. Connie Adler, who has extensive experience working in a women’s clinic in Nicaragua, will introduce Zintl, followed by comments from Dr. Daniel Onion, professor of community and family medicine at Dartmouth Medical School and a member of the benefit’s planning committee.

The committee collaborates with individuals or groups (like Mission at the Eastward), in supporting and promoting global health awareness and disease prevention through education and sharing of resources.

The cost is $25 a ticket, and tables for eight are available. For additional information or reservations, call Bonnie or Ed at 628-6035.

Mission at the Eastward is a cooperative parish of the Presbyterian Church, USA, serving West Central Maine. Since 1999, MATE, in partnership with the Macfarlan Presbyterian Church, has funded a community-wide poultry project for the 14 villages of the Macfarlan region, a rural area that is short on jobs and long on the impacts of poverty and 50 years of apartheid. The poultry project provides eggs for protein for children and expanded to include goats for meat and milk.

For those suffering from AIDS, MATE has funded the start-up of soup kitchens in four villages for families affected by the disease, and provided home-based care kits for caregivers and patients.

The International Health Steering Committee was established in 2004 to initiate an active partnership with a developing country.

The South Africa Partnership and Franklin Community Health Network’s International Health Steering Committee are cosponsoring the benefit dinner. Proceeds will support a palliative home-based health care program for HIV/AIDS patients in the Macfarlan community near Alice, South Africa.