SOUTH AFRICA–

The AIDS War

November 1999

16’58’’

00:12:

In a Johannesburg hospital children are learning to play before they die. They’re the victims of Aids and the luckiest among them will only have 5 years of life. Most of them are orphans after inheriting the disease from their parents. Southern Africa now has the fastest rate of Aids growth in the world.

00:37:

Jackie Schoeman, Socialworker, English:
“I think that we had one child that died on admission. That was the shortest stay that we ever had here. I think the average length is around a month. We have about five deaths a month.

00.50

So the emphasis at the hospital is on quality of life.

00.55

What we try and do is make the children’s death as comfortable as possible. We offer palliative care – so we’ve got pain control, oxygen, drops, whatever they need to make their deaths as comfortable as possible and the children that are negative we try and find families for. So, at the end of the day, you actually feel that you are doing something to help these kids.”

01:22:

In South Africa there are 1500 new cases of infection each day. The epidemic is threatening to wipe out the country’s economic development. Victoria Makoke advises corporate South Africa on the Aids crises.

01:33:

Victoria Makoke, AIDS-Consultant, English:

“It’s going to be very hard when we look at the economy and how the economy can be developed if we look at HIV and AIDS. We’re going to be stuck again with a group of the population that doesn’t have enough skills to skill the country. We’re going to be

economically disadvantaged by having young people that are economically active dying of HIV and AIDS. In a way, if we don’t do anything now, the future is looking very bleak and we have to do something to be able to economically survive.”

02:10

It’s 7 o¹clock in the morning in rural Zimbabwe and 12 year old Spiwe has already been at work for two hours. Other children are getting ready for school but for Spiwe things are different.

02:30:

Spiwe won’t be attending school. In the last year both her parents died of AIDS and as the eldest daughter her responsibilities are to look after her two sisters and her ageing grandmother. Without support and money for school fees Spiwe and her sisters will grow up illiterate. In Sub Saharan Africa this is the fate of millions of children. Southern Africa is now the worst hit region in the world for cases of HIV and Aids. The predicted millions, which over the next few years will die from the epidemic, have produced comparisons to a nuclear disaster.

03:10:

Gro Harlem Brundtland, Secretary General of WHO (English):

“Well, it’s a dramatic situation and that’s why this kind of concept can be raised.

I feel it is more relevant to compare to the medieval times in Europe where the

plague, the common plague, spread and killed off one third of the population in many cases. This is what we are seeing in some Southern African countries. “

03:35:
Spiwe, orphan (Shona):

"When I work, I am able to buy clothes or other things that my sisters might need".

03:47

While Spiwe continues to work at home many orphans turn to prostitution to make a living. In her district it’s estimated that more than 30% of the population are infected with HIV and Aids.

04:06:

Soundbite, Spiwe, orphan (Shona):

"My job is to help my sisters. I’m saving for their school fees, to buy them books. I’ll even help them with their schoolwork, if they need help that is. I’ll also do their washing for them."

04:42:

Another schoolday and the singing of the national anthem. The AIDS disaster has forced schools in Zimbabwe to intensify their education programme to raise awareness of the epidemic.

04:58:

Timothy Stamps, Minister of Health in Zimbabwe (English):

“Forewarning the young is forearming them and we have a life skills programme for every school in Zimbabwe. The quality of that life skills teaching does vary from school to school but I hope this is one of the things the National Aids Council will look into…

that good information, good quality and comprehensive information is made available to children.”

05:25: Soundbite, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Secretary General, WHO, (English):

“I think there is increasing awareness about the fundamental issues involved and we need to see that health systems and communities deliver care, that people who have AIDS are treated, and that there is voluntary testing and that people are given advice on how to deal with the situation. So these things are gradually developing now in many of the countries.”

05:59:

Soundbite, pupil

"I heard someone had rashes or pimples, as if they had herpes. How can you distinguish between herpes and AIDS?"

06:11:

Andrew Mukura, health worker

"AIDS kills the body’s defence system. As a result, the infected person very easily becomes a victim to any disease he or she may come across. Even if it’s tuberculosis or herpes, it becomes very difficult to cure".

06:40:

One of the major obstacles facing local health workers is the taboos surrounding sexuality and AIDS.

06:49:

Headmaster’s speech during school assembly:

"Aids is a product of sin. Let us avoid committing sins. Of course, adulterers are people who end up suffering from AIDS. Thank you. Let us listen to a prayer for Misty Mtanga. Let us bow our heads and pray.”

07:10:

But schools are not only the place where messages are being spread.

07:15:

Helen Jackson, Executive Director, SAFAIDS (Southern Africa Aids Information Dissemination Service):

“I think schools are both a tremendous opportunity, a venue where HIV related skills, life skills can be taught, but they’re also a risky situation in that many teachers are young, young males who may be very tempted to have sex with girls in their schools. The blood transfusion service in Zimbabwe in fact has actually documented this. When they go to collect blood from schools, they’ve sometimes found initially no HIV infection, then one or two teachers infected, then later on older girls in the school being infected. So the pattern of transmission has actually been documented.”

08:00:

Poverty in Southern Africa forces thousands of women into prostitution ­ another avenue through which AIDS is being spread. Sex worker Memory is afraid her job in the end will kill her.

08:15:

Memory, prostitute

"I’m afraid of dying young. My two children are too small to manage on their own. It’s also my responsibility to look after my parents. To be infected by the disease would be a disaster.

08:28:

Memory has two engagements a night. She insists she is still free of AIDS but knows she’s vulnerable.

08:37:

Memory, prostitute

"Sometimes men refuse to pay if they have to use condoms. Other times customers who know they’re infected will tear the condom. They want to spread the disease, because they don’t want to die alone."

08:54:

Poverty and society’s disregard for women, pushes mothers and prostitutes like Memory inexorably towards AIDS. The minister of health argues that their plight is made worse by those who enjoy taking risks.

09:10 Soundbite: Timothy Stamps, Minister of Health, Zimbabwe (English):

“You can give a young man as much education as you like about safe sex, using condoms, avoiding risk, restricting alcohol consumption, reducing drug intake but in a certain environment all these things will be thrown to the wind, for people growing up taking risks is one of the excitements of life. You know very well people standing on the edge of a cliff, if they’re all told don’t look down, everybody looks down."

09:46:

But at least the government cannot be accused of following the pack. In the main health care system a lack of success in treating Aids has forced the Ministry of Health to co-operate with those traditional healers who have been ridiculed by practitioners of Western medicine.

10:05:

Dr. H. Gwindi, AIDS co-ordinator, Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Association (English):

“I know quite a number of herbs that can remove all the signs and symptons of AIDS.

I think about 80% of people in rural or in urban areas go to traditional healers first because they’ve been used to traditional healing.”

10:30:

As part of the collaboration, traditional healers are now being trained to deal with health issues related to AIDS. They’ve even caught up with the modern world. According to the Aids co-ordinator for traditional healing his people were the government’s last resort.

10:48:

Dr. H. Gwindi (English): Johannesburg, South Africa:

“They couldn’t do anything. They didn’t know what to do with it. But then they thought if we go to these people in the rural areas, telling them this is a killer which has no cure, what will they say…. They will say we’ll go to our traditional healers and you try something because we can’t just die. That’s when the understanding begins. That’s when the government of Zimbabwe decided to call traditional healers to come to the rescue of educating everyone about AIDS. “

11:34:

Without help from the healers, but with a courageous determination, Peter Busse has survived living as HIV positive for 14 years. He’s a former director of NAPWA, the National Association of People Living With AIDS.

11:49:

Peter Busse, HIV-positive, former directior of NAPWA

“In the mid eighties, there was an idea you’ve got this disease and you knew you weren’t going to die in the next week or the next month and some people thought that would happen so there was a sense of time. But I think the thing that’s surprising now, sitting here 14 years later, is how long it’s been. I probably had a couple of years in mind. I think it becomes easier living with it on a long term basis. Each year becomes easier. What was very important in the beginning were markers of time like my birthday, Christmas, summer holidays, those sort of things. When you first get diagnosed, it seems that those things are going to be shortened, you’re not going to have as many birthdays and Christmases but as time goes on and you have a history of having had 14 being positive it makes you stronger and you realise that life does go on in a way.”

13:01:
Beauty has not been so fortunate in fighting Aids. She contracted the disease from her now deceased husband and even at death’s door, like so many of her countrymen she refuses to accept her condition.

13:20: Beauty, AIDS-patient

"I don’t have AIDS, but we always hear statistics on the number that have the disease, and the number that don’t. Sometimes I worry, because it’s not clear to me whether I’m among the infected lot. I am afraid of the disease, because if I was infected that would mean the end of my life".

13:42:

Although her days are numbered, Beauty still has plans for her three sons.

13:45:

Beauty, AIDS-patient

"I’m just trying by any means to raise money to pay for my son’s school fees. I want them all to finish grade four. After that they will be ok".

14:07:

Nightfall and Beauty ventures outside.

14:12:

Beauty, AIDS-patient (Shona):

"When I walk out, it is difficult to stand up for long. I am already feeling tired ­ I feel like sitting down".

14:22:

Two million Africans died from AIDS in 1998. In Zimbabwe, an estimated 1500 AIDS-patients die every week, and there are no signs of the epidemic slowing down. The life expectancy in the country has been reduced by five years since 1994 and now is at 44 years. By 2010 the life expectancy is predicted to drop to 30.

14.44
Across Southern Africa the public health systems have been unable to cope with the heavy burden and most AIDS-patients rely on their extended families to look after them. Governments have been guilty of reacting too slowly to the disease and in some cases are still are neglecting to deal properly with the full scale of the disaster.

15:13:

Gro Harlem Brundtland:

“We need to attach the attention to changes in societies and to the responsibility and accountability of governments to put priority on fighting poverty and on focusing on health and education. That can be done with the help of bi-lateral donors, of the NGO’s

and of course of the UN system which is what we try to do. But we can never supercede the political responsibility and take over that from the institutions and political bodies of the countries in question. It will never have sustained effect.”

15:57:

But on the global issue of Aids, many blame the attitude of the international community. The main focus of criticism has been levelled at the United States, which has repeatedly refused to settle its debt to the UN.

16:14:

Gro Harlem Brundtland:

“It has been a great problem over the last decade or so, that a big country and a major member of the Security Council has not been paying its dues. It spreads the wrong message about not taking seriously commitment, so this is a major problem for the UN system and it’s still not solved although we have been addressing it and I have personally been speaking out very strongly in the UN assembly, already six, seven years ago on the issue it still remains a major stumbling block.”

16.57

In the meantime people like Beauty continue to hang on to life. Without human intervention her plight like many others will be leftto the forces of nature.

STORY ENDS: 17.09.

Produced by Anders Saether c.1999