The Purple Journal

Today, I think of the millions living with HIV and AIDS. My friends that have been affected. The lives that have been senselessly lost. Gugu Dlamini. Killed for being HIV positive. So brutal. Such a horrible death. The government so slow to respond in the beginning. Such ineffective programs. Why so reluctant and unwiling to give people the drugs they need to stay alive? Garlic? GARLIC??????? Please. Get a grip. Ludicrous! It is so embarrasing that our National Minister of Health would spout SUCH RUBBISH! Dont you read? Havent you seen the results of ARV's? THEY WORK! Our response to the epidemic in South Africa has been pathetically slow to say the least. The numbers of those infected are shocking. But the lives, the people...we tend to fucus on the numbers and %'s of the "population". So dehumanising. That "population" is comprised of people mothers and fathers, people with faces and lives...not just numbers. Why can we not geth this right? Why so slow. ARV's. Why is tht so hard for the government to understand and DO!? I think of the field I left (HIV AIDS Education and Training). There are many people and programs and organisations doing excellent work. Within the constraints they have, a good job is being done by hundreds of NGO's around the country. But they need resources. Funding. Support from government. Co-ordination of their efforts. it makes me so angry...Lip service is being paid, but it is hard to see the results of all the talking. There is very little. We need to move beyond the talking and political commitment to action and providing ARV's to the people that need it. That we are talikng about it in organisations, the media and in government is progress. Progress is not enough. Progress does not save lives. Progress does not feed children who are hungry and caring for themselves because they have lost their parents. Progress ...The grant for people living with HIV/Aids is R750. Not even a month's groceries. Progress.