Zimbabwe: From HIV Victim to Aids Activist

By, Rose Thamae, Zimbabwe Independent (Harare), December 8, 2006

I AM the founder of a community-based organisation in Orange Farm, South Africa, called Let Us Grow providing home-based care and support to people living with HIV.

We also train peer educators among the youth who work night and day to reduce the spread of HIV in this desperately poor community.


Two years ago, during the month of August -- Women's Month in South Africa -- we staged a vigil every night that a woman died as a result of an Aids-related illness in our community as a way of demanding the roll out of anti-retroviral drugs or ARVs.

We were out there every night: in other words, at least 31 women died during that period.

But our campaign succeeded and now we have an ARV site. The number of deaths has been reduced to about two a month. I care for others, as I care for myself. I became HIV positive as a result of a gang rape.

I know, in the most painful way possible, the link between HIV and Aids and gender violence. I tell my story, over and over again, to get the South African government to provide Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) to survivors of gender violence in the hope that others will avoid the fate that befell me.

I tell my story to heal the pain of a life punctuated at every turn by violence, yet redeemed by the power of turning anger into activism. This is not only my story: but the story of three generations: of me, my daughter Mpho, and my grand-daughter Kgomotso.

I was born on February 17 1953 in Orlando East. My grandmother told us that my mother left us when I was three years old, because my father was very abusive. I had four brothers. Three have passed away and I have only one left.

I was raped at the age of nine by my father's friend. He took advantage of me because I was alone and he knew my father was not home. He came to the house and told me I must go with him to find my father. He took me to his place where he raped me.

It was 10 in the morning. I was young I could not understand what this man was doing to me. There was no one in his house. He ordered me to lie down, so that he can lie with me while we were waiting for my father. I did. He was my father's friend and I trusted him. As I lay down, he raped me. He kept on saying be a good girl I'll finish right now.

While he was raping me there was a knock at the door. It was my grandmother, calling my name. He opened the door and ran away. My grandmother grabbed me and asked me what he had done to me. I told her what had happened to me. They took me to the police station. I was then taken to the doctor. I had to be taken several times because I contracted a sexually transmitted disease (STD). I don't know what has happened to this man. No one told me anything. My grandmother... everyone... kept quiet.

If my mother had been around, maybe she would have given me support. I was on my own, I was all alone. I was not allowed to ask any questions especially in those days. I had to wait for people to tell me or ask me how I felt. I think that's why my father's friend took advantage of me, he knew I would obey him.

When my uncle (my father's youngest brother who was jailed with Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe on Robben Island) came back from jail my grandmother told him what had happened.

She asked my uncle to find out where my mother was.

After these long years he finally found my mother who was married to another man. She agreed to take us in. To me it was a victory to find my mother. As time passed my life began to change.

I was called names, Le tla le pepiwe, vezandlebe which means I'm not the child from that family. I had one half-sister. Whenever there was a family gathering they treated me like a joke. I was like a slave to them.

In 1970 I had a boyfriend and in 1971 I gave birth to my daughter. When my daughter was four years old I was raped again by five boys behind Orlando Stadium. My friends and I were coming from the stadium. They managed to run away. I was not so lucky. I didn't escape: they raped me. I went home and told my family. They said it was my fault: why didn't I run away like the others?

I have never had peace in my mind. I lived because I had to live for the sake of my daughter. I tried to go on with my life. Another boyfriend tried very hard to make me happy.

One day, as we were coming from the cinema, very happy, a gang of young men, carrying pangas and knives pounced on us. My boyfriend ran away and left me with these monsters.

I tried to fight, but I was stabbed in the back and in my head. I lay there with blood all over me. They raped me one by one. They had no mercy at all. No one could hear me screaming as it was an open space. After gang-raping me they left me there.

I managed to make my way to the police station and found my boyfriend there. The police asked me what kind of a boyfriend leaves his girlfriend behind. They blamed my boyfriend. They did nothing to help us. My family blamed me.

Two years later in 1990 I was diagnosed as HIV positive. The world was falling apart. Telling my story made me feel strong. I keep telling my stories again and again to my kids, to my friends, to my neighbours, to the world. I have learned that if bad things happen to you it is not the end. I find strength in my work. Each week there is a funeral to attend. But there is also a life being saved; a new lease of life being given.

* (This story is part of the I Stories series produced by the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service for the Sixteen Days of Activism on Gender Violence).


Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200612080969.html

OPT: No friends, few drugs and little expertise for AIDS patients

By, IRIN PlusNews, December 7, 2006

GAZA CITY - The manner in which 14-year-old Mahmoud (not his real name) was infected with HIV was unusual - but the subsequent reaction of Palestinian society was all too predictable.

"I got it from a blood transfusion when I was 12. Now, no one talks me. My friends all left me when they knew that I'm AIDS patient. I feel I'm alone in this world. They are afraid to get infected from me, as I was infected, but it is not my fault that I have AIDS now," said the youngster from the West Bank.

"I'll never finish college. I'll never have a family like the others. I will never have babies. I also believe that it will not be long before I leave this world," he added.

Mahmoud is one of 36 people known to be living with AIDS in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), according to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). Altogether, there have been 61 recorded cases in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem since 1987, with five times as many men infected as women, according to Ezzat Gouda, a doctor and director of the sexually transmitted diseases (STD) unit at the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Twenty-five of those infected have already died, Gouda said. More than half the existing patients are described as being heterosexual, two as bisexual and one, homosexual. A further 11, including Mahmoud, were infected during blood transfusions. Three were infected from injecting drugs.

Gouda added that efforts by Palestinian health care providers and institutions to help patients, were not coordinated, and provided patchy cover. "It is necessary and urgent to have a national plan for STD and HIV services in Palestine," he said.

Social stigma

Gouda heads the Palestinian National AIDS Programme (NAP), established in 1998. He told IRIN/PlusNews that officials may not know the true scale of the problem in OPT because the social stigma attached to AIDS in the Arab world prevents people from reporting to the medical authorities.

In a situation unique in the Middle East, the stigma attached to AIDS in the OPT means positive Palestinians are both automatically denied entry into Israel for security reasons, and identified by Israeli intelligence services as potential informers, according to an Israeli non-governmental group, Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI).

The Shin Bet, Israel's security agency, believes that the stigma of having AIDS in Palestinian society means people living with it are more likely to be coerced into carrying out an attack to reestablish their family's reputation, PHRI said.

"There have been instances where the weakness and desperation of sick Palestinians were exploited in recruiting them to carry out attacks within Israel," PHRI wrote in a report in October. "The Shin Bet also exploits exactly these things to recruit them as collaborators and to wring information out of them."

Israeli security sources denied to IRIN/PlusNews that they employed such broad profiling criteria when dealing with sick Palestinians wanting to enter Israel.

Islam a shield to AIDS

Many Palestinians believe they will not be infected by HIV because Islam takes a hard line on some of the practices by which the virus can be spread, like homosexuality, sex work and intravenous drug abuse. "The Islamic religion stands as a shield to AIDS. If we follow Islam's instructions, AIDS will never be a problem at all," said Sheikh Taysir Tamimi, the Palestinian Chief Justice.

According to Palestinian health director, Gouda, Palestinians who travel to Israel and abroad are more exposed to the virus - there are an estimated 4,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Israel, according to a UNAIDS survey in May, which did not include an estimate for OPT.

Some efforts to spread AIDS awareness have been made by the Palestinian authorities and the United Nations Works Relief Association (UNRWA), which looks after Palestinian refugees. But both organisations spend most of their time grappling with the more immediate crises affecting Palestinians, Gouda said.

Though HIV-positive Palestinians are treated for free, antiretroviral drugs are not always available, he said. "We depend on the donation of drugs, national and international. So we have many problems in view of Israel's siege and repeated closures of the Palestinian territory. In some cases, patients were suffering unnecessary illness because they had no drugs or were denied access to Israel."

Mahmoud and Palestine's 36 other HIV/AIDS patients continue to suffer from a lack of expertise among medical staff, Gouda said. "The lack of trained medical staff and social workers for counselling and psychological support in the field of HIV/AIDS also stands as a grave constraint," he added.

Israel and Western nations slapped an aid embargo on the Palestinian government, after Palestinians democratically elected Hamas in January - the pressure is aimed at getting Hamas to renounce violence, and to recognise Israel's right to exist.

Israel says Palestinians have their own government to blame for the aid crisis.

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Kenya: The Unsung Heroes of the Aids Pandemic

By, Lillian Aluanga, The East African Standard (Nairobi), December 2, 2006

The scourge has destroyed the family structure, leaving grandparents to care for orphans,

Mama Rispa Amuom and her granddaughter, Iska Anyango, 13, in Nyalkinyi Village

Ms Paulina Awino is hungry. It is well after 2pm and she has had nothing to eat since morning.

For more than two hours, she has been lying under a tree outside her hut, away from the scorching heat in Homa Bay District's Kogelo Kalanya area - hoping.

Awino is hoping for many things. She is hoping that God will give her more years to take care of her grandchildren, that her aching back will give her a moment's peace and that her grandchildren return home before dusk.

She is also hoping that a Good Samaritan will drop by with some little flour or omena for the family's evening meal. But most of all, the octogenarian is hoping for a miracle. She expects a miracle that will result in the development of a cure for Aids, to end the suffering of millions.

She knows only too well how devastating Aids can be. There was a time she had 11 children. Now she has none. At least five of them died from Aids related complications.

All she has now are memories of her children and the eager searching faces of her four orphaned grandchildren whom she has been raising for the past three years.

Awino is one of an increasing number of elderly people bearing the brunt of the effects of Aids in a continent that accounts for over 60 per cent of more than 38million global HIV infections.

Mama Maria Ogende who takes care of her orphaned grandchildren in Kogelo Kalanya village.

Ever since the first cases of Aids were reported in the 1980s scientists have worked overtime, conducting studies, running trials, developing tools of prevention and striving towards finding a cure. Reduced infection rates, access to ARV treatment and prevention of mother to child transmission of the virus have all been achieved in more than 20 years of battling the disease. But behind these gains lies the devastation the virus has wrought on families.

At the sound of her grand daughters, Emily Akinyi and Makril Adhiambo, returning home from the river, Awino struggles to sit up. She slowly raises her head from her 'pillow' - the bottom of what was once a straw basket used for storing grain - and rests her bony hands on the sides of the reed mat she has been lying on.

"My back has been aching for a while but there has been no money to go to hospital," Awino says, beckoning her granddaughters to her side.

Her face lights up as she fusses over the children. Are they tired? Had they found something to eat? Did they get enough water? The children obviously adore their grandmother and snuggle close her. She is the only 'parent' they have left.

"I am too weak and old to work. If I had the strength I would do all that I could to see that these children never sleep hungry and that they get a good education," Awino says.

Hunger has been a constant companion for Awino and her grandchildren. Tea is a luxury that rarely graces the table and Awino has taken to jealously guarding the little millet flour saved from the last harvest. They must not "waste" it. That means that porridge is also rare.

Akinyi, a shy girl of 13, recalls the last time she tasted chicken. It was last year, during Christmas when a neighbour brought them some, all in the season's spirit of good cheer.

Awino is haunted by the fate of her grandchildren when she dies. She stares at the clear skies as if seeking for some assurance but there is none. She shields her eyes from the sun and surveys the compound for a while. The weather is no longer favourable.

Not too far from where Awino sits, some whittling stalks of maize sway in the wind just a few metres away from a huge boulder where a green tunic has been spread to dry. An agulu (a large earthen pot used for storing water) stands outside her hut, half empty.

Mama Pauline Awino and her orphaned granddaughters Makril Adhiambo, eight, and Emily Akinyi, 13, at Kogelo Kalanya village, Homa Bay District. Awino, who is ailing, is the breadwinner of the family.

"My daughters are dead. I know it is Aids that killed them. Had they been alive, we would not be sleeping hungry," Awino says resignedly.

She does not know her age but says she was born at a time when the Europeans were fighting a 'big war'. Her neighbours estimate it was sometime just before World War One. "I pray everyday and ask God to give me some more time so that I can take care of these children until they are grown," Awino says, as she smiles at Adhiambo, eight.


Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200612041207.html

Doctor fights odds to ease AIDS epidemic

By, Alphonso Van Marsh, cnn.com, December 2, 2006

TAUNG, South Africa - In a country plagued by AIDS, a doctor in this remote industrial area of Taung, South Africa, is quietly providing life-prolonging drugs and hope for people who are HIV-positive.

"I saw too many of our people dying," Dr. Vanga Siwisa said, explaining why he gave up a comfortable life and medical practice in the suburbs of Johannesburg for this small town.

His office in the Taung Public Hospital is far from fancy: A ratty sheet partially covers an examination table, and posters hung with strands of medical tape cling to the wall. An air conditioner groans. (Watch how Siwisa gave up his lifestyle to fight AIDS )

But that simple office occupied by Siwisa, who was recently named "Doctor of the Year" by South Africa's Rural Doctors' Association and the South Africa Academy of Family Practice, is a life-giving center.

At this clinic -- which Siwisa started from scratch two years ago -- thousands of people infected with HIV can receive life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs.

Access to anti-retroviral drugs is a necessary component of effective HIV/AIDS treatment, according to the World Health Organization. When the drugs are given in combination, they stop the HIV virus from replicating within the body, and delay the deterioration of the immune system and onset of AIDS, according to the organization.

Lowering the high mortality rate of AIDS in South Africa -- nearly 1,000 people die of it each day -- largely depends on this treatment, according to a report from the Actuarial Society of South Africa and the Medical Research Council. (Watch an uphill battle to stop AIDS )

But as of September, only 213,828 South Africans with HIV are receiving anti-retroviral drugs, says the country's health minister.

That's out of the 5.4 million people who were infected with HIV by the middle of this year, according to estimates by the government and the Society of South Africa and the Medical Research Council.

So when health minister Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang advocated so-called "superfoods," like garlic and lemon, as an alternative to drug treatment for HIV, it caused an international uproar, ridicule and calls for her resignation.

Tshabalala-Msimang was effectively replaced by South Africa's deputy president as spokeswoman for the government's plan to fight HIV/AIDS -- but retains her ministerial post.

Siwisa, 65, is careful not to disparage South African authorities. "For this disease, it is true we started late. We should have started around 1999 or 2000. But I wouldn't say it's too little, too late," he said.

Before his clinic, he said, "Most people were just coming in with AIDS-defining illness and probably dying in the hospital."

'I don't know where else I would go'
Indeed, his clinic, the first in Taung, a town about 300 miles northwest of Johannesburg, has signed up 2,876 critically ill patients for HIV/AIDS treatment for an anti-retroviral drug rollout program. Nearly 2,000 of them are already on anti-retroviral drugs.

"Patients tell me, 'Hey Siwisa, you know when you first came here I was almost dead? Now you can see I am alive,'" he said.

His clinic is a battleground for the fight against HIV/AIDS. The infected line up in the early morning hours. Those healthy enough to work tend to a vegetable garden on hospital property, and reap some of what they sow. It is part of Siwisa's philosophy that nutrition should accompany, but not be an alternative to, anti-retroviral drugs.

Every open space of the clinic seems to have a chair with somebody sitting, waiting. Grandmothers, middle-aged men, a young mother carrying a newborn baby -- all wait to have their blood drawn, their bodies weighed, and ARV drugs dispersed at the makeshift clinic pharmacy.

It's loud and chaotic -- this is a public hospital after all -- but there's a sense of dignity among those who were otherwise shunned by their communities when their HIV-positive status became known.

"I don't know where else I would go. Without Dr. Siwisa and the clinic we'd have nothing, no one to assist us," Miriam Ganabo said. The frail 42-year-old woman learned she was HIV-positive last year, and she's now receiving anti-retroviral drugs and nutritional food parcels from the clinic.

Some patients say the clinic and Siwisa are a godsend, but Taung's anti-retroviral rollout program is far from perfect.

"We are understaffed. We are all suffering from burnout because everybody is a jack-of-all-trades," Siwisa said.

It is difficult for rural public hospitals to recruit talented medics like Siwisa, the province's Department of Health admits. The salaries are low, and a lack of a social life or decent schools for children deter many. Siwisa said the clinic needs social workers, pharmacists and professional nurses.

"The department recognizes and values the huge contribution Dr. Siwisa has done. We need people of Dr. Siwisa's caliber, people who are committed to serve our community with pride, particularly in rural areas," says Nomonde Rasmeni, the Department of Health's top official for the province.

Such recognition may not be enough to keep Siwisa in Taung. He said the struggles of running the clinic and lack of social opportunities have taken their toll.

"I doubt I will stay beyond 2007, unless something drastic happens but I doubt it," Siwisa says. "My social life has been suffering for too long. I have to live again."

But his legacy -- and clinic here in Taung -- will continue.


Source: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/11/30/safrica.aids/index.html?section=cnn_latest