LilMtnCbn
11-26-2003, 05:41 AM
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=125&art_id=qw1069824961815B213&set_id=1
Relatives and strangers at helm of Aids care
November 26 2003 at 07:36AM
By Benita van Eyssen
Finding a lover who shares her appetite for cheap liquor has never been tough
for Eunice Elliott, even after she contracted the virus that causes Aids.
The 42-year-old vagrant from Grahamstown in South Africa knows her HIV status -
the diagnosis was made during a brief sober spell a year ago.
When she became incapacitated, having contracted full-blown Aids in the face of
an overburdened public health care system, like many of the country's Aids
patients, she turned to her family for care.
'I had to put on the rubber gloves and clean her blisters when she had
shingles'
"We knew what kind of lifestyle she lived, so when they said she had Aids, it
didn't come as a shock. Automatically, we pulled together to help her," says
her younger sister Nola Elliott.
"I had to put on the rubber gloves and clean her blisters when she had
shingles. It was awful. I had to make sure that she had three nutritious meals
a day and that she took her TB medication and kept off alcohol.
"The R600 people like her get from the government every month doesn't cover
half of what it costs to look after someone so sick," Nola said in an interview
with Deutsche Presse-Agentur, dpa.
"I couldn't cope and got drained emotionally and financially, so I sent her to
my mother. But, she's sleeping in people's toilets again.
"When she's sober, she refuses to speak about it, but when she's drunk, she
says the virus is hers and she'll do with it what she wants.
Few are ever adopted
"It's not easy looking after an Aids patient," the office clerk explains, while
insisting that her family, although they disapprove of her sister's choices,
will never turn their backs on Eunice.
Tens of thousands of South African children orphaned or rejected by their
extended families as a result of HIV and Aids find themselves in the care of
the state.
"I think its safe to say that most of the children that enter ours and
non-governmental insitutions are infected or affected by HIV/Aids," says
Johannesburg-based social services official Ilse Bence.
Few are ever adopted, even by families with the resources to care for ill
children.
No deliberate distinction is made between children infected with the disease
and those that are not, in children's homes, places of safety and foster homes.
"Unless a child becomes ill regularly, they won't be tested. One doesn't want
to prejudice or discriminate against them," says Bence.
"Our community-based care programme using non-governmental organisations funded
by government is our biggest effort at the moment. We find it is the cheaper,
culturally more acceptable option," she says.
Social workers and volunteers oversee the needs of children left alone and
destitute because of Aids.
"If you look at the classic adoption scenario, they're really people looking
for a child that will live. A lot of the resistance is around fear of loss, far
more so than the fear of infection," says Cotlands director Jacqui Schoeman.
Private sponsorships and volunteers keep afloat insitutions like Cotlands, a
sanctuary for abandoned HIV and Aids infants and children, and Nkosi's Haven on
the fringes of Johannesburg's inner city.
"We have lots of calls from people wanting to adopt. The first thing they
always ask is 'does the child have HIV'. These people don't want a child they
know is going to die," says Jane Mwase, resident manager at Nkosi's Haven.
The announcement came as a relief to many saddled with the burden of caring for
Aids patients. Of the estimated 4,7 million South Africans already infected
with the disease, about 400 000 have full-blown Aids.
But, with the prospect of accessing potentially life-prolonging drugs still
some way off, most accept that they will have to soldier on.
Health authorities say anti-retrovirals will be available in a few dozen health
districts by next December and more widely in five years.
Staff at Cotlands and Nkosi's haven say they hope that the sad picture of South
Africa's youngest Aids victims will change with the advent of a national
treatment programme and as more infected pregnant mothers access drugs that can
prevent them passing the virus to their babies.
Queen is a suburban "sangoma" or traditional healer. About 70 percent of the
population seek traditional remedies in the event of ill health -AIDS patients
are no exception.
"I have about 15 regular Aids patients. They are all in their mid-30s and
forties. They come from all over. Always they come for treatment when they are
already very weak. Some come for my herbal mixtures even when they are also
seeing doctors," she says.
"With this disease, it is not easy. It is not like cancer or a dangerous heart
condition that you can't blame on someone else. Aids patients, especially those
who know they are going (to die) are sometimes very bitter," she says.
As HIV infections rose in South Africa and other parts of the region, so too
did the army of caregivers in neighbourhoods, church groups and schools.
Most who volunteer to nurse patients that are often from the same impoverished
communities are exposed on a daily basis with the bodily fluids, the dementia,
the frailty and the frustrations of caring for these terminally ill patients. -
Sapa-DPA
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
Relatives and strangers at helm of Aids care
November 26 2003 at 07:36AM
By Benita van Eyssen
Finding a lover who shares her appetite for cheap liquor has never been tough
for Eunice Elliott, even after she contracted the virus that causes Aids.
The 42-year-old vagrant from Grahamstown in South Africa knows her HIV status -
the diagnosis was made during a brief sober spell a year ago.
When she became incapacitated, having contracted full-blown Aids in the face of
an overburdened public health care system, like many of the country's Aids
patients, she turned to her family for care.
'I had to put on the rubber gloves and clean her blisters when she had
shingles'
"We knew what kind of lifestyle she lived, so when they said she had Aids, it
didn't come as a shock. Automatically, we pulled together to help her," says
her younger sister Nola Elliott.
"I had to put on the rubber gloves and clean her blisters when she had
shingles. It was awful. I had to make sure that she had three nutritious meals
a day and that she took her TB medication and kept off alcohol.
"The R600 people like her get from the government every month doesn't cover
half of what it costs to look after someone so sick," Nola said in an interview
with Deutsche Presse-Agentur, dpa.
"I couldn't cope and got drained emotionally and financially, so I sent her to
my mother. But, she's sleeping in people's toilets again.
"When she's sober, she refuses to speak about it, but when she's drunk, she
says the virus is hers and she'll do with it what she wants.
Few are ever adopted
"It's not easy looking after an Aids patient," the office clerk explains, while
insisting that her family, although they disapprove of her sister's choices,
will never turn their backs on Eunice.
Tens of thousands of South African children orphaned or rejected by their
extended families as a result of HIV and Aids find themselves in the care of
the state.
"I think its safe to say that most of the children that enter ours and
non-governmental insitutions are infected or affected by HIV/Aids," says
Johannesburg-based social services official Ilse Bence.
Few are ever adopted, even by families with the resources to care for ill
children.
No deliberate distinction is made between children infected with the disease
and those that are not, in children's homes, places of safety and foster homes.
"Unless a child becomes ill regularly, they won't be tested. One doesn't want
to prejudice or discriminate against them," says Bence.
"Our community-based care programme using non-governmental organisations funded
by government is our biggest effort at the moment. We find it is the cheaper,
culturally more acceptable option," she says.
Social workers and volunteers oversee the needs of children left alone and
destitute because of Aids.
"If you look at the classic adoption scenario, they're really people looking
for a child that will live. A lot of the resistance is around fear of loss, far
more so than the fear of infection," says Cotlands director Jacqui Schoeman.
Private sponsorships and volunteers keep afloat insitutions like Cotlands, a
sanctuary for abandoned HIV and Aids infants and children, and Nkosi's Haven on
the fringes of Johannesburg's inner city.
"We have lots of calls from people wanting to adopt. The first thing they
always ask is 'does the child have HIV'. These people don't want a child they
know is going to die," says Jane Mwase, resident manager at Nkosi's Haven.
The announcement came as a relief to many saddled with the burden of caring for
Aids patients. Of the estimated 4,7 million South Africans already infected
with the disease, about 400 000 have full-blown Aids.
But, with the prospect of accessing potentially life-prolonging drugs still
some way off, most accept that they will have to soldier on.
Health authorities say anti-retrovirals will be available in a few dozen health
districts by next December and more widely in five years.
Staff at Cotlands and Nkosi's haven say they hope that the sad picture of South
Africa's youngest Aids victims will change with the advent of a national
treatment programme and as more infected pregnant mothers access drugs that can
prevent them passing the virus to their babies.
Queen is a suburban "sangoma" or traditional healer. About 70 percent of the
population seek traditional remedies in the event of ill health -AIDS patients
are no exception.
"I have about 15 regular Aids patients. They are all in their mid-30s and
forties. They come from all over. Always they come for treatment when they are
already very weak. Some come for my herbal mixtures even when they are also
seeing doctors," she says.
"With this disease, it is not easy. It is not like cancer or a dangerous heart
condition that you can't blame on someone else. Aids patients, especially those
who know they are going (to die) are sometimes very bitter," she says.
As HIV infections rose in South Africa and other parts of the region, so too
did the army of caregivers in neighbourhoods, church groups and schools.
Most who volunteer to nurse patients that are often from the same impoverished
communities are exposed on a daily basis with the bodily fluids, the dementia,
the frailty and the frustrations of caring for these terminally ill patients. -
Sapa-DPA
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
