visiting the valley of death

visiting the valley of death
30th November 2014 | lightspeed

A number of people have over the years played a role in the development of the TAC and our battle for antiretrovirals. There are too many to mention. In the following pages a small group of people who played a role in one way or another and represent various constituencies, share their recollections of the past and their dreams for the future.

Kerry Cullinan has been a journalist and later Managing Editor of Health-e News Service since 1999. Health-e has been at the forefront of reporting on the HIV epidemic in South Africa.
Kerry Cullinan has been a journalist and later Managing Editor of Health-e News Service since 1999. Health-e has been at the forefront of reporting on the HIV epidemic in South Africa.

We stood at the edge of a u-shaped valley in Dududu, south of Durban, and the hospice nurse pointed to the homes where her patients lived. She indicated to every third or fourth hut.

Although government had announced the ARV rollout two years previously, it had been too little, too late for many people whose immune systems were so damaged that they could not bounce back, even with the medication.

Sister Vicky Sikhosana and I plunged down a rough track into the valley to visit the hospice patients.

First, we saw Sizakhele Mhlongo (33) who had been dumped at her mother’s home by her boyfriend a week before. She lay on a thin mattress covered in blue plastic on the floor of her mother’s hut, sobbing and gasping. Her lips were dark with dry blood, her eyes large and fearful. Small smears of diarrhoea marked the wall alongside her. Sizakhele had thrush, which made breathing painful as sores coated her mouth and throat. She also had tuberculosis. And of course, she was dying because her immune system had been destroyed. Some time later, her mother, Themba – semi-blind and stiff from a recent fall – returned from fetching water to wash the diarrhoea-soaked bedclothes.

We moved on, but, the weekly hospice visit was too late for Vuyani Msindisi. The 63-year-old had died a few days previously and his black-clad relatives were gathered under a tree to mourn him.

Philile Ndlovu, only 18 months old, had inherited HIV from her dead mother. Her 22-year-old aunt, Sindiswa, had quit her piece-work to care for the querulous child, way too tiny for her age.

The valley was decimated.

Sizakhele died shortly afterwards. But perhaps Philile survived, and today is a parentless teen, cohabiting with a virus.

I have not seen a skeletal AIDS patient in years – except when I close my eyes and see all those that I reported on during the bitter struggle for ARVs.