Naming Death A-I-D-S :: AIDS

Naming Death I was visiting a doctor in Kwazulu-Natal, the province hardest hit by AIDS, to see for myself the impact of AIDS in the region. The doctor was just conclusion up with an elderly patient from a village. After I introduced myself and express the purpose of my visit, she immediately leaned towards the woman and demanded, Tell her, just tell her how many a(prenominal) young passel youve buried this week. The elderly woman softly replied, fiver funerals this Saturday. Every week about five or six. Weve been told that one in eight siemens Africans atomic number 18 estimated to be human immunodeficiency virus-positive, I said. My dear, the doctor matter-of-factly replied, its non one in eight here 95 percent of the pot I see are human immunodeficiency virus positive. 95% I insufficiency you to close your eyes and imagine all of your friends and family - the people nearest and honey to you. Now, I want you to imagine 95% of them gone. This is what human im munodeficiency virus does, this is what it is doing in South Africa and other parts of the world. What we saw there is a veritable genocide. in front our trip, all of us read the statistics and in some way impression we understood the magnitude of AIDS epidemic, but you understand it only when you visualize there is a human face behind every statistic. When passim the country it is estimated that 1 in 8 people are HIV positive, do we really think that this battle can be win by multivitamins and condoms? Yet, this is what I saw over and over again end-to-end Cape Town and other parts of the country. These people are liveness in poverty, health care workers told me. They cant get jobs. They cant even afford meet food, forget about drugs. The same doctor who told me that 95% of the patients are HIV positive lamented that the only treatment she can offer is multivitamins and one antibiotic How do we expect the younger generations to hope for a brighter future in this envir onment? I was told that many South African young people have a fatalistic, Im-going-to-die-anyway attitude. How do you convince them to practice safe-sex? Or that their lives are worth living? Theres a stigma attached to being HIV positive (we know that in this country as well).