Consider the following statistic. In 2007 South Africa had 0.7% of the world’s population and 17% of the global burden of HIV infection (Karim et al).
The prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in South Africa in 2009 was 17.9% (UNAIDS). In 2008 that meant an estimated 5.7 MILLION people were HIV positive (UNAIDS). 5.7 million out of a population of 49,000,000. That is a staggering figure. Then if you take into consideration the other social issues that exist – it is an uphill battle. Another part of the HIV/AIDS epidemic here is that tuberculosis (TB) is now also an epidemic in South Africa. Someone can get TB without being HIV positive obviously, but it is the most common opportunistic infection that occurs in people living with HIV/AIDS. Again despite the small population of South Africa in 2006 they had the fourth largest number of TB cases in the world (Karim et al).
In my couple months in South Africa I have certainly interacted with people who have been HIV positive, but not necessarily known who they are. There are two exceptions though – and two stories that have really touched me have been emotionally challenging.
My first weekend in Alexandria my host sister was driving to Port Elizabeth (PE) and it was my chance to see the big city and grab some groceries. Part of that trip was to stop at the tuberculosis hospital to visit some community members. We were visiting two people – one was a girl my age (23-24) and the cousin of my host sister. The other was the father of my Granny’s next door neighbors. These neighbors - two children who I met for the first time that day had already lost their mother to HIV. They were living in their house on their own but sleeping and eating at my Granny’s house. This was my first encounter with people who were extremely sick. After that trip I hadn’t heard anything about either of them since. That changed recently.
Two weekends ago when I stopped by my Granny’s on my jog as I normally do I found her niece there. I decided to postpone my jog for a visit with this girl since I had met her before to see how she was doing. She was doing well enough to have been approved to come home and visit her family for the weekend. I found out that she had been in that hospital since last October. We talked about what it’s like for her there. She doesn’t like the food they give them – sometimes plain veggies with nothing on them. She said that it’s hard because so many people in her ward have died – and sometimes you don’t even get to say goodbye because it’s so sudden. And when I asked if she was able to talk to anyone like a counselor she said that there is no one except a church group that comes to pray with them sometimes.
To describe her as skin and bones is not an exaggeration at all. Something was clearly wrong with her eye and I asked her what happened to it since I had seen her two months ago. One day – the “white thing” just started to move down her eye, and it was really red. When she went to the hospital about it they told her that she should just get the eye removed but she didn’t want to do that. She is now blind in that eye. I was amazed that you could just go blind in one of your eyes suddenly with no explanation. I can’t imagine how scary that must have been. I was also shocked that she was in a hospital and sees nurses daily and there had been no “early intervention” with her eye issue. During our conversation she had to take her pills – and had no less than 10 different pills she was supposed to take daily. She doesn’t take all of them because some of them make her vomit. She knows which ones to avoid. She ended up taking six pills all at once! She said she is trying so hard to get better because she doesn’t like staying in the hospital and would rather be at home eating all of the good foods that she likes. In October she will have been at this hospital for a year. I hope she gets out and better before then.
In the course of our conversation I asked her how the father of her neighbors was. She told me honestly that he was very, very sick. This made me extremely worried for the two little friends that I have. It’s hard enough to imagine being in elementary school and losing your mother. But to have your father so sick he’s in the hospital far away and you can never see him – it’s so difficult.
That same week that their father passed away. I really don’t even know what to say. I’m heartbroken for them. Parents are losing their children before they reach adulthood – and children are losing their parents in the time they need them most. This is reality and this is life. This isn’t new or shocking to anyone here – it’s just the way things are.
-Karim et al. “HIV Infection and Tuberculosis in South Africa: An Urgent Need to Escalate the Public Health Response”. September 12, 2009. www.thelancet.com.
