Carework

HIV and AIDS have drastically increased the burden and need for care giving, especially in Africa, which hosts some of the countries with the highest prevalence rates. These tasks, and the resulting economic and social costs, are overwhelmingly borne by women and girls. The significance of this for women globally is reflected by the priority theme of this year’s 53rd United Nations Commission on the Status of Women being held in New York early next month À“ The equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including care giving in the context of HIV/AIDS.

My name is Mpho Thamae and I am a community health worker. I always dreamed of having my own my own hair salon. I did not plan on being a community health worker and it has not been easy for me. But I decided to take this course because of what my mother has lived through.

A woman lies on the floor in a small room in one of the high-density suburbs in Harare. She groans in deep pain and agony. She rolls up and down on the floor and struggles to wake herself up or shout for help. There is no one to take her to the hospital or even give her something to eat.

When she was orphaned at 7 years, Margarida Tomas* quickly changed roles from a child into a “woman.’À Following the death of her parents, she went to live with her aunt in the Mozambican capital Maputo. Her aunt Anita convinced the girl’s other relatives that she would take care for her and send her to school, as no one in their rural home 700 kilometres north of Maputo had the capacity.

For the past five years, 67-year-old Joana Mathlombe has had a crash course in care work, a profession she embraces reluctantly.

I picked up the pieces. I got back on my feet. I started to live. I took care of my self. I got a boyfriend. I told him my status and he accepted me the way I am. Later we got married. I had gained a lot of education about HIV and AIDS. I had learned that there was life after HIV, that I could live fully like everybody else.

My name is Abigail Mooketsi and I am a 33-year-old mother of three children. I have two boys and one girl and I live in Orange Farm Ext. 7a. I was diagnosed with HIV in 2003. In 2005, I joined a support group for people living with HIV and AIDS at an organisation called “Let Us GrowÀ in Orange Farm.

Home based care is being seen a key strategy to care for people living with AIDS, yet the needed resources for careworkers to do their jobs are often lacking.

Today, I am visiting one of my patients, a 51-year-old man, Fernando. He was lying down on his bed, but I help him sit on one of the wooden chairs in his tiny home. His body is so thin; it looks like it will break, but he insists on sitting up to receive me. He is coughing and gasping for breath. Fortunately he is now on anti-retroviral drugs; and I just hope the drugs save him. He has only been taking them for one month. He almost died, but he has so much will to live. He is trying so hard.

The non-involvement of men in HIV and AIDS initiatives in the region is one of the impediments to progress in addressing the effects of the pandemic. Theresa Sikute Chishimba from the Society for Women and AIDS (SWAAZ) in Zambia, said that women are at the forefront with very few men joining in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Citing examples from her organisations’ experiences, she said SWAAZ invites both women and men, but men never show any interest.