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Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 15:03:44 -0400 (EDT)
AIDS: et tu Zimbabwe? (fwd)
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Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 11:00:16 EST
Subject: [naijanews] AIDS: et tu Zimbabwe?
Tuesday, May 11, 1999 Published at 23:22 GMT 00:22 UK
Zimbabwe struggles against Aids onslaught
The disaster in Zimbabwe is far worse than anyone
expected
By Evan Davis, BBC television's Newsnight
economics correspondent, in Zimbabwe
I thought I already knew all I needed to about the impact
of HIV and AIDS in Africa.
Certainly I knew it was a human
catastrophe, that the virus was
running through populations on a
scale unknown in the West, in an
area of the world ill-equipped to cope.
But it was only when a British businessman with
extensive experience in Zimbabwe described to me
some of the practical effects the illness is having on
society there, that I decided I should find out more.
Zimbabwe now has the
dubious honour of being the
world's most infected country
- about a quarter of the adult
population is HIV positive. In
many urban areas, infection
runs to 40%. In the army, it
is more like 80%.
Life expectancy at birth, on
one estimate, is poised to fall
to 38 years. The country
suffers from having an
economy advanced enough
for the virus to spread, in particular, on relatively
good roads - epidemiologists have tracked high HIV
prevalence along the main freight routes.
Alas, the economy may be strong enough to help HIV,
but it is not strong enough to fight it. Zimbabweans
cannot get modern anti-retroviral drug combinations
because in Zimbabwe, the annual health budget is about
stlg5.50 per person, enough to finance a modern drug
regime for about five hours a year.
The effect of HIV on the
country mirrors its effect on
individuals. In the absence of
treatment, a typical HIV
patient has a relatively
normal life for six for seven
years in Africa, before
succumbing to
life-threatening AIDS
symptoms.
So it has been with
Zimbabwe - HIV infection
spread rapidly between 1991
and 1996 - but the country
was able to function for several few years before
HIV-related deaths started occurring in earnest. But that
gruesome new phase is now underway, with profound
effects.
Grim turning point
We visited a large cemetery outside Harare - one of the
guards told us that the rate bodies arrived had increased
markedly in December 1997 - "too much nightclubbing," he
explained.
Now, across the country, among a population about
twice the size of that in London, an HIV death occurs
every few minutes. Indeed, in some areas, HIV appears to
have reached a grim turning point, in that the number of
deaths is outstripping the number of new infections,
taking the overall level of HIV prevalence down.
The human effect of the
disease is obvious, the social
and economic effects subtle,
but real.
Although the combined
effects of stigma, denial, and
confusion with other
manifestations of poverty
make HIV a difficult subject
to discuss and analyse in
Zimbabwe, it is clear that
within households and
workplaces, the disease is
affecting the ability of Zimbabwe to look to and think
about its future.
For example, school attendance suffers, as sick parents
cannot afford school fees, or require their children to
look after them at home.
Pay-outs threat
Saving and investment suffer, as households burn up
their slim reserves to survive in the absence of a
breadwinner.
The financial sector malfunctions - as it attempts to
protect itself from the potentially crippling impact of
HIV-related pay-outs for the sick and disabled, by
preventing individuals from buying a significant amount
of life insurance. Negative HIV tests are pre-requisites
for significant cover, but 80% of those wanting life
insurance decline to take the test.
In the workplace, costs have
risen, with absenteeism,
higher staff turnover, and less
incentive to train - how can
you afford to train staff if they
could be ill within months?
In the countryside, the
burden of 'returnees' -
individuals who migrate to the
towns to get work, who get
sick and then go back to
their village to die - and the
catastrophe of the
ever-growing number of orphans is forcing social change.
In some places, communal land has been set-aside simply
to provide for the children.
No one likes to say it, but the impact of HIV is
particularly deep because unlike most health disasters to
befall Africa, this one is killing the strong, the
parents, the productive, the very people on whom
functioning societies inevitably rely.
Worst fears
It even sometimes most affects the more skilled and
better trained. It was explained to me that they have had
more time, energy and cash to spend to get themselves
infected.
All in all, in Zimbabwe it is a disaster far worse than
anything anyone expected at the time the worst fears of
HIV were being discussed.
Zimbabwe is not a society without hope. People cope -
there are "a thousand and one coping strategies" one HIV
activist told us. Even people who are in denial can learn
to cope, and people in Africa are more familiar than most
with the need to cope.
But still, the brave attempts of Zimbabweans to live life
as normal in the face of a disaster unlike anything we
could conceive, is both sad and impressive.
Source: BBC
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