Posted on 07/03/2002 2:34:21 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Many AIDS professionals, too frightened to let their names be used, accused President Robert Mugabe's government of being too distracted by its farm seizures and its political battles to deal with the crisis.
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe - Thabani Ndlovu, 24, used to love karate. Now he lies emaciated and barely moving on a ratty mattress in a patch of winter sunlight in his father's backyard, dying of a disease that is ravaging his country.
According to statistics released Tuesday by UNAIDS Zimbabwe has the second-highest HIV rate in the world with 33 percent of adults infected with the virus.
With its economy in disarray, HIV infections have exploded. And many of the millions of people already infected are getting sicker and dying far faster because of a severe shortage of food and basic medicines.
"It's devastating," said Maria Massunda, chairwoman of the Zimbabwe AIDS Network, an umbrella group for AIDS service organizations.
Between 2,000 and 5,000 Zimbabweans are dying of the disease every week, health workers estimate. As many as 900,000 children have been orphaned in the southern African country of 12.5 million.
In Ndlovu's poor neighborhood in the city of Bulawayo, community health workers know of at least 10 people who died of AIDS in May and another 44 who were horribly sick. But they suspect many more ailing in secret.
Ndlovu became sick while living in South Africa last year and returned home so his family could care for him.
But his father, Nathaniel, a retired army medic, cannot afford medicine, vitamins or nutritious food to nurse his son back to health. He struggles just to buy a little corn meal every day.
"There is nothing else," Nathaniel Ndlovu said as his son struggled to take small sips from a cola bottle.
Though Botswana has the world's highest HIV rate with 39 percent of adults infected, that relatively wealthy country has a stable government, a strong health care system and a deep political commitment to tackle the crisis.
With political violence roiling Zimbabwe over the past two years, its economy has collapsed.
The health care system here, once the envy of other African nations, is in tatters with doctors and nurses joining the country's brain drain and public hospitals running out of common pain relievers and antibiotics.
Meanwhile, food is running out as the country suffers a terrible hunger crisis caused by drought and government seizures of white-owned commercial farmland. With little to eat, many infected Zimbabweans are becoming dangerously ill far earlier than they would have otherwise.
"If we had food, people could go a long way just on a good nourishing diet," Massunda said.
The hunger crisis has also weakened people not yet infected, making it easier for the virus to take root in their bodies after exposure.
And many are being exposed in the cauldron of risky behavior that followed the country's economic collapse, Massunda said.
Women are bartering sexual favors for food. Millions of unemployed people, frustrated at their poverty, have turned to sex for an escape. Teen-agers unable to afford school fees have dropped out and prowl the streets.
"There is more promiscuity, there is disease, there is everything," Massunda said.
Many AIDS professionals, too frightened to let their names be used, accused President Robert Mugabe's government of being too distracted by its farm seizures and its political battles to deal with the crisis.
Zimbabwe did declare a state of emergency for AIDS in May, allowing it to import or manufacture generic versions of essential medicines. However, with the country suffering a hard currency shortage, few AIDS experts believe it could buy even generic drugs.
The government also implemented a 3 percent AIDS income tax on all businesses and individuals in 2000 to raise money to fight the disease.
"There are quite significant efforts being made," said Dr. Evaristo Marowa, director of the National AIDS Council, a quasi-governmental organization that manages the money collected from the tax.
Much of that money has gone to newly formed district councils that provide home-based care, give assistance to orphans and run prevention campaigns.
"We are looking at how we can empower the communities themselves to take actions against HIV/AIDS, whether it be care or prevention," said Marowa, who argues the UNAIDS statistics are exaggerated.
But many more people will die and become infected before the nation's anti-AIDS efforts bear fruit, he said.
"There are no quick and easy fixes here," Marowa said.
(rn-tl)
When eight leading industrial countries met in Canada last week, they formulated a program for aiding Africa. But they avoided mentioning Mr. Mugabe or Zimbabwe -- because that might have triggered squabbling with African leaders.
Silence cannot hide Mr. Mugabe's responsibility. More than 5 million people are going hungry in Zimbabwe. The situation is expected to get far worse -- because of the dogmatic myopia of an aging president who is either out of touch or out of his mind. [End Except]
AfricaWatch:
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...and all you lurkers & surfers-in from other locations really need to click on the bump lists to see "the rest of the story"--
-there's a lot that is simply "not talked about."
And many diseases and other physical problems are lumped under the AIDS heading that don't beling there, is what I've read. The country is a mess because of the "leadership." Time for the average citizen to support a revolution and throw the bums out.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see that. Well, maybe taking a wrecking ball to the un building...
"Pity About Africa..."
...it's a take-off on an otherwise dreadfully forgettable Sci-Fi book, "Pity About Earth" and it's meant to convey a little of the frustration and sense of futility I feel about most of the continent.
I really think the hammer of corrupt rulers and the anvil of AIDS will wreck most of it.
I try and imagine what it would be like to be in this fellow's shoes. What a sad, miserable life it must be. Shame on the G8 leaders for not bringing Zimbabwe up at their recent meeting. And that goes double for the African leaders that condone Mugabe's thuggery with their silence. Damn them all for their silence on this matter, and attempting to brush it under the rug. I don't want a penny of aid to go to Zimbabwe, not a bit of it will reach those that need it and they don't deserve it with what they have done to the farmers.
Bump!
We'll keep pouring billions into your impoverished nations in order that your fascist dictator, Kingfish-types can be chauffeured around in the latest versions of Mercedes, Rolls, and Bentley. They will, as the saying goes, be eating high on the hog and swilling every expensive alcoholic beverage known to man, while the ignorant masses will wallow in pig droppings.
Pass the Dom and Beluga Sambo and close the drapes.
Over the next 20 years they will solve most of Africa's problems if we just stay out of the way.
So9
How can this be? I understood that the Cuba's and other communist nations have the best heathcare, free to all! Centrally run, state-controlled healthcare like this is what Hillary and gang want to institute here.
The problem in Zimbabwe is that Mugabe doesn't shoot the medical community as it flees across the border, as the means to keep talent in the country.
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