[pronut-hiv] Rwanda: Dare to Care for Aids Victims

["ProNut-HIV" <pronut-hiv@healthnet.org>]

Rwanda: Dare to Care for Aids Victims
The New Times (Kigali)

OPINION
June 26, 2006
Isaac Mugabi
Kigali

The twin issues of access to care and the type of care for HIV/AIDS,
deserve serious attention even as the world battles to provide
antiretroviral therapies/drugs (ARVs) for its treatment.

For the past 20 years, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has devastated various
populations the world over, with effects that have been described in
superlative terms. It is no longer news that 70 per cent of the more
than 40 million people with HIV/AIDS worldwide, live in Sub-Saharan
Africa, and that about 90 per cent of those living with the disease do
not have access to antiretroviral therapies. One can say that Rwanda has
endeavoured to make ARVs accessible and has taken the campaign of
voluntary counselling and testing to all corners of the country in
liaison with local NGO's involved in HIV/AIDS activities.

However this implies a more urgent need to provide holistic approaches
to care for people with HIV/AIDS and their caregivers, in order to have
a more effective impact on the battle against the pandemic, especially
in poorer countries like Rwanda.

In formulating, providing and institutionalizing such holistic
approaches to caring for persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs), it is
imperative that fundamental elements are embedded in a typical 'code of
conduct for HIV/AIDS care', which must be humane in character, universal
in application, adaptable in every circumstance and affordable to the
patient community. A recent visit to the Kigali Central Hospital (CHU/K)
ward Number 4 sent shivers down my spine as I realised that some
patients have been left at the mercy of Rwandans I can describe as good
Samaritans.

If you have not been to this particular ward, whether on an
acquaintance visit or have had a loved one there sharing a bed with
another patient, both strangers to each other, then you will get the
exact point I am trying to put forward.

Talking to some of these patients you get to feel what it means not to
have a loved one by your side, during such moments of sickness and
deprivation. Some of the AIDS patients at this particular hospital
depend on one meal a day.

So there is a group of generous Rwandans that has taken it upon itself
to visit the underprivileged sick who do not have any support from their
relatives, to some, the closest of kin living as far as Cyangugu.
Whether collectively and/or individually, it is imperative that the
society provides care for those living with HIV/AIDS and those directly
affected by the disease, including orphans and caregivers. It is the
belief of this writer that caring for the sick is another way of
fighting stigmatisation and the most sincere and effective approach to
AIDS care and cure.

This becomes clearer when viewed alongside the target of making
significant progress in implementing comprehensive HIV/AIDS care
strategies and strengthening community-based healthcare and
infrastructure to provide and monitor treatment and care to people
living with HIV/AIDS, support individuals, households, families and
communities affected by HIV/AIDS, and improve the capacity of health
care personnel, supply systems, financing plans and referral mechanisms
required to provide access to supplementary vitamins and quality
medical, palliative and psycho-social care for PLWHAs; by at least 2010
.

The Ministry of Health and the National Aids Control Commission have
made significant strides in supporting the associations of people living
with HIV/AIDS, and one can say that Rwanda is on the right path.

I say so because in some countries in Africa seen by the West as the
most affluent like South Africa, Nigeria and the like, free anti
retroviral drugs are still a dream and, true their own leaders have of
recent shown total ignorance about the transmission of HIV/AIDS.

President Mbeki of South Africa once pointed out that poverty was the
root cause of HIV/AIDS and much recently his embattled former deputy
Jacob Zuma proved to the world that an immediate shower after sex with
an infected young lady was enough to scare off the virus.

South African citizens have nothing to be proud of in terms of guidance
on health issues from their otherwise erstwhile leaders. That includes
access to the drugs leave alone the supporting nutrition that they may
need to avoid the effects of the ARV's. The unfortunate relationship
between HIV/AIDS and malnutrition is already known and acknowledged.
Malnutrition increases the progression of HIV infection while HIV/AIDS
aggravates malnutrition by weakening the immune system through its
various negative impacts on the patients' food intake, digestion,
absorption and utilisation.