What We Don't Need

Headlines and stories like this in the national newspaper:

The solution to HIV/AIDS crisis?

by Mduduzi Magagula

EZULWINI – A woman who was bedridden for over a year says she has been healed by a mixture of water and oxygen.
Sibongile (last name withheld to protect her) (37) said she has been suffering from a rare illness that caused sores all over her body. She preferred not to discuss her HIV status.
The disease also caused her to lose weight and confined her to bed for a whole year.
During that time, she was also not able to do anything by herself. She said she was turned away from many clinics she visited for her sickness.
"Health officers at the Mbabane Government Hospital told me that I should stay at home without offering any medication to help my situation," she said.
Her health condition continued to deteriorate until her niece introduced some foreigners to her who offered her a bottle of medication called Oxysilver. She said a week after taking the mixture the sores on her body started to heal and she was able to eat without assistance.

The story, which ran in the Sunday edition of the national newspaper and was advertised with just the above headline written on signposts throughout all the towns (one of 5 or six stories advertised), shouldn't surprise me, I guess.  A story about some AIDS cure or other like this runs every few months or so.  This time, apparently it's driven by an American "businessman" named John Kreitzer who does at least successfully run a website listing about 10 companies in different industries and pictures of himself with Barry Goldwater and other American luminaries.  He  has, according to a companion story, written to the king to say he'll bring "investment worth over US$2 billion (about E14 billion) to the Swazi economy" by starting a factory for his Oxysilver product here.  


I'm sure he will.


I'm also sure that another set of people who are already scared and confused by HIV will be even less sure about what works as this new week begins.  I guess it highlights what an important part continuing to try to educate journalists should play in the strategy to combat HIV.  For all I know Ms. Sibongile really did get better after drinking their magic water, but I'm also sure it didn't cure her HIV, if she is infected.

Back on the Horse

I guess it's been 6 months since I've written anything.  That seems like too long a break, but with every passing day/week, it gets harder to write. So here goes.  Wish me luck, and keep up the not-so-subtle reminders that I need to write more.

The view north into Pine Valley toward Mbuluzi from our house in Mbabane

This is the view from our front lawn in Mbabane this afternoon, taken at about 5:15 p.m. or 55 minutes before the sun went down.  Strangely, the last two days here have been rainy and gray, which isn't really supposed to happen in the winter here.  Earlier this week we had near-freezing temperatures at night, but it does seem like it is starting to warm up as the days get longer.

It's been an interesting time to be in Swaziland the last few months.  The country is experiencing what the government calls a "cash-flow problem," but more and more appears to be a failure of budgeting accompanied by (or perhaps the cause of) an inability to get a loan from anywhere.*  Accurate figures are few and far between, but the government employs about 35,000 people, which the International Monetary Fund and others say is far too many for a country with just over a million people.  The government has introduced potential austerity measures, and each month threatens to implement a 10% reduction in civil servant salaries, but so far protests or threat of protests have prevented that from materializing.

Recent months have seen significant delays in payments of nearly everything.  Salaries have been routinely late, though so far have been paid.  Government vehicles that break down are unable to be fixed.  Non-essential government ministries have been prohibited from refueling cars.  Health and education spending are theoretically "ring-fenced" from the austerity measures, but it seems to be an all-out brawl to get funds each month when the revenue comes in, and civil-servant salaries have been at or near the front of the line, followed by other things including health and education.

That last piece, of course, impacts what we are trying to do on a daily basis with HIV treatment and Anti Retroviral medicine.  The Minister of Health and others have said publicly that we are currently drawing down our buffer stock for ARVs and that we need to buy more, but so far it's been difficult to ensure the financing is there to do it.  It's something we've been paying close attention to and trying to rectify, and it's an ongoing effort.  We haven't been successful yet, but we will keep trying.  In many ways it's admirable and fairly unique that the government wants to fund its own ARV procurement, so we all hope that funds will come available soon/immediately.

So that's the update for now, I still have a long list of things I'd like to write about from my request several months ago, and I'm hopeful that now that I've written something, the writers block will come to an end and I'll be a more regular correspondent

More to come...

G

*Just this week apparently South Africa has offered the government a E2.4 billion loan (~350 million USD), so it's possible that things aren't quite as bleak as they seem.  However, the IMF is here this month to review things, and by most accounts, that review isn't going to be pretty.