This post is from Botswana, but not from Andy...luckily, his mom is doing much better. The rest of us are heading out this Saturday. In the last days, thought I'd use the blog to do something I haven't before, which is appeal for funds (not for us). Today is World AIDS Day and I wanted to use this blog to make a request from anyone who’s been following us in Botswana over the past year. In particular, I wanted to give people a way to help who maybe have been wondering what they can do.
You might know about the situation in Zimbabwe. The country borders Botswana to the north and there are huge political and economic problems there right now. The population of Botswana is about 2 million people, but it is estimated that there are an additional 2 million Zimbabweans living here as well. No one knows how many of them are HIV infected, but from our experience here it is hugely prevalent. In Botswana, all citizens receive free treatment for HIV. However, the program does not apply to Zimbabweans. Myself and all of the people I work with meet HIV-infected Zimbabweans nearly every day through working in the government hospital. I’m sure you can imagine how it feels to see a child whom you know would be able to thrive if they were on ARVs (anti-retroviral medicines for HIV). I recently had a patient die at 18 months old. He had been in and out of the hospital for the past 9 months with recurrent infections. His mom looked everywhere for treatment. She has been living in Botswana for the past 3 years but is not a citizen so the programs here were not accessible to her. She even went back to Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe, for 2 months, looking for a place to get treatment. There had been ARV programs in Zim, but they are pretty much non-functional at this point.
She was unable to afford the medicines and her child died of meningitis. There are so many women in her situation. These people are living in an environment in which very few people want to give information or help and there are no readily available resources for them. They might come into the hospital, find out that they themselves are infected and then be told to stop breastfeeding because of the chance of passing it onto their baby. However, no one asks them if they have money to buy formula…I have had 3 month olds existing on cow’s milk and tea because of this type of advice.
There is a private practitioner in Botswana who has chosen to basically treat every Zimbabwean who comes to her without regard for cost. She charges them very little to nothing and is taking the costs out of her bottom line. Several of us at my workplace are working on establishing a systematic way of treating these patients, but until all logistics are in place, there are people who are really in need of help.
What I would like to propose is, if you have a desire for your money to directly make a difference in someone’s life, I will be the conduit for your funds to reach those who need them. If you would like to give money, I will deposit it directly into a trust fund established by this doctor to pay for the costs of treating these patients – for ARVs, medicines for other infections, formula for those no longer breastfeeding, transport costs, etc. To give you an idea of costs, ARVs for an adult are about $30 USD/month, for a child about $45 USD, formula is about $15 USD for one can. A woman cleaning houses (the main type of job that most of them can get) here can expect to be paid about $50 USD/month.
I can assure after working with this doctor for the past year and a half, the money will directly go to the patients. You will be helping people who really have no other resources right now. Just to give you an idea of how desperate some of these situations are, I recently saw a patient and her 4 month old baby boy, both HIV infected. I asked her to come back next week so I could check on her before she goes back to Zim to see her younger siblings who are still there. She asked if I could do it earlier, because she was worried that the river would get too high for her to cross with the baby tied on her back. She travels this way because she is in Botswana without documents and is worried that if she leaves via the border she won’t be able to get back in.
There are legitimate solutions to this problem in the works, but until then, the people who care for these patients are emptying their pockets to try to help as many as possible. I think anyone who has worked in a situation like this realizes that while the only real solution is large-scale change, in the interim, we all need to do what we can to help people who can’t help themselves. Just drop us an email if you’d like to help – my address is michelle.eckerle@gmail.com. Thanks so much.
