Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Cape Town (Agenzia Fides) – On the occasion of World AIDS Day 2009, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) is launching a microsite dedicated to AIDS in South Africa where they tell the stories of the people from Khayelitsha, on the outskirts of Cape Town (South Africa), who are HIV-positive or sick with AIDS and how their lives have changed since the introduction of antiretroviral therapy and treatment against tuberculosis. It is interesting to read their stories, their hopes and dreams, as they struggle against poverty, exclusion and prejudice.
In the streets of Khayelitsha, a shantytown in constant growth and immersed in poverty on the outskirts of Cape Town, there is a saying: “Living with HIV, dying of tuberculosis,” used to sum up the lives of people in this area, in which one in three persons is HIV-positive and infections resulting from HIV are the leading cause of death. In South Africa, 5.5 million people, more than any other country in the world, are living with HIV or AIDS. Although there is the largest number of people in the world subjected to antiretroviral therapy (about 850,000), there are many millions with no access to the lifesaving drugs they need, because they are too expensive or simply unavailable. All this causes more than 350,000 deaths per year in South Africa.
The virus attacks the immune system, rendering the individual vulnerable to infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, which spread easily due to poor living conditions of the people of Khayelitsha. Since the first treatment for HIV/AIDS in Khayelitsha dating back 10 years ago, Doctors Without Borders, in cooperation with the Ministry of Health of South Africa, has provided 13,000 patients with antiretroviral therapy and developed an effective way to fight the battle against the two-sided deadly epidemic. Through the integration of therapies against HIV and tuberculosis at the clinic in Ubuntu, visited each year by more than 6,000 patients with HIV and tuberculosis, patients receive better care and physicians are better able to manage their conditions. (AP) (Agenzia Fides 1/12/2009)
