WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2008-03-14 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: JoAn
Submitted by Lars Pluss:
Mar 13th 2008
From The Economist print edition
WITH effective drugs now increasingly available to combat AIDS, why do so many South Africans still choose to stay at home and die? Sizwe, a 29-year-old from the rural district of Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape, lives close to what was one of the country’s most successful treatment programmes, administered by M(233)édecins Sans Frontières (MSF), a non-governmental organisation. Yet Sizwe refuses to have himself tested, in spite of losing his best friend to AIDS, having access to medication and watching those on treatment recover their health.
Jonny Steinberg, a journalist, spent months looking at the world through Sizwe’s eyes, trying to understand what prevents him and millions of other South Africans from knowing their status and, if necessary, seeking treatment.
For MSF’s Hermann Reuter, a doctor, the solution lies in drugs being available nearby, a good service provided by nurses and lay people in clinics(151)not doctors in hospitals(151)and a network of activist patients putting pressure on the public sector to deliver. But Mr Steinberg remains sceptical. “When I spoke to [Hermann Reuter] about my travels with Sizwe, it sometimes seemed that I was bringing news from another planet, that Hermann himself lived in a charmed circle of activists and converts,” he remarks.
Sizwe’s reluctance runs deep. “Some people have maybe sent a demon to have sex with me: a demon with HIV. That is why I am scared to test,” he says. The young man overcame his dirt-poor upbringing and now owns his village’s only shop. But he has to manage his modest success carefully for fear of unleashing his neighbours’ envy and hostility. This is no place for the weak: some of the village youngsters bring in guns to rob elders they have known all their lives. Sizwe’s life and success feel precarious, and who knows what testing positive might unleash?
A distrust of white doctors also feeds the fear of testing. When MSF arrived in the area, explains a volunteer, people believed that the white doctor had come to kill people with his needle and blood test. “They believed AIDS was caused by politics, by white people.” President Thabo Mbeki’s dissident views on AIDS and antiretroviral drugs reflect similar fears. A local government councillor tells Mr Steinberg that he does not trust the drugs because they are not African. “Mbeki did not fabricate the old man’s paranoia,” remarks the author, “but he did draw it to the surface of South Africa’s political culture.”
For Sizwe, who is about to marry the mother of his son, testing positive would also destroy a future constructed on the remains of a traditional culture that commands marriage and heirs. The young man argues that knowing that his blood is “dirty”, with a virus that can be tamed but not killed, would push him to a fast death.
In an elegant and accessible style, Mr Steinberg gives human faces and voices to fear, shame, stigma and a public health system that is failing its people, while placing it all in a broader context. His book is essential to understanding the visible and invisible barriers that undermine the fight against AIDS in South Africa.
Source: http://www.economist.com/books/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=10843131