In this newsletter

Monday
1st November 2004

Nightmare made real by ignorance    Zambia's President Promises to Provide More AIDS Drugs    Farmers Fail to Get Access to Aids Drugs    Africa: Double Impact of TB And Aids Threatens Millions    U.N. Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Launches Stop AIDS Project Calling on U.K. Government To Increase AIDS Funding    

Nightmare made real by ignorance

By Ken Jones

Dr Jones takes a walk with one of the boys.

Imagine. You hear your mother is sick. You have not seen her for some months as you have been living with your older sister in order to ease the burden of space in your widowed mother’s tiny home. Obviously you want to see her. You love her. She cared for you and your nine siblings after your father died. A hard task in rural, impoverished Western Kenya.

On a sunny Saturday morning in May you set off to see your ailing mother. You know where she is hospitalized. You have a vague idea of the route you need to take. Your only means of getting there is by foot – all 35 kilometers of the way. Still, it is your mother, so it is worth a small sacrifice in sweat and sore feet.

About half way on the journey you realize that the trip is far more tiring than you expected. Luckily, a friendly farmer comes along and offers you an overnight rest-stop. It was really kind of him. A truly God-inspired act.

Next morning you agree to help with a little light work on his shamba before resuming your trek. It is the least you can do in response to his open hospitality.

But things are not what they seem.

Once in the cane field you feel a terrible sense of foreboding. Then you see the knife. Then …

Now turn on the house lights. This is no longer a video story. It is a real, terrifying and awful indictment of our society.

The character in this real story is a 12 yea-old boy called Philip. After the knife came the cutting off of his penis.

This is not some make-believe story from the pen of a macabre author. It is true and it happened in Bungoma this past May. Philip is today a patient at a tiny Catholic-run clinic halfway between nowhere and nowhere else on the border of Bungoma and Sirisia divisions.

The villagers who live where the potentially homicidal attack on Philip took place say this is just the tip of a terrifying iceberg. The motive — if such a terrible act can ever be justified by such a neutral noun – is said to be that some demented halfwit thinks that making a potion out of virgin male phalluses will create a cure for Aids.

Laugh all you like. Philip is not laughing.

Now repeat the story with Oscar, aged 14, but add the removal also of both his testicles, of his left ear, and the severing of tendons in his left arm – all because he dared to fight back as he was cut and butchered.

Then add little 4-year old Omondi whose penis is also gone. Any more out there?

For four months the media in Kenya ignored these attacks. Attacks not just on Philip and Oscar and Omondi, but on our national integrity.

No court case has been heard against Philip’s friendly farmer. Repeated attempts to interest newspapers and radio in this crime against innocence have resulted in one big nothing. Until The Standard took a stand.

Better late than never. But, why? Why the silence? Why the lack of action by those who had the power to act?

We owe it to Philip, Oscar and Omondi to act. We owe it to those other boys who will suffer similar fates if we treat this heinous act of torture as an aberration. It is not. Ignorance of HIV/Aids, ignorance of its causes, of its modes of transmission, of its potential, all breed ignorance in its so-called cures.

People with Aids will not die tomorrow if treated effectively. They can lead a positive and constructive life for decades with proper drugs and diet. But no virgin penis brew, no elixir from some sick witchdoctor, no exorcism rite will cure him or her.

We owe these three boys a lot. They have brought to the front and centre the true facts about HIV/Aids in rural Kenya. The government can bleat and preen itself about a so-called 98 per cent "awareness" of HIV. I am aware of Outer Mongolia. I know it exists. It does not mean I know where it is, its capital, its people, or what its economy or government is like.

We owe Philip and Oscar and Omondi more.

We owe them real awareness of HIV/Aids – not words, but hands-on knowledge.

We also owe then a life.

They may never have families of their own now – at least one never can have his own children. But, we can be their families now. Our failure to face reality about HIV/Aids has made us complicit with that farmer in Bungoma.

Now it is pay back time.

Perhaps we can find a surgeon from the US or Britain to rebuild their penises. Perhaps we can offer them counseling.

Perhaps Nairobi Hospital will offer some facilities for the boys during their long and arduous treatment. Perhaps an airline can be found to fund flying in the doctors to do this ground-breaking work.

Bwambengi, the single-minded surgeon from Eldoret has worked tirelessly to help. But what about the long-term support? I truly hope we are not all Levites and Sadducees. Turn that video back on. But first, let’s pay the viewing fee.

Dr Jones is a retired physician based in Bungoma.Those interested in helping Philip, Oscar and Omondi can contact Dr K Jones via email: kenjones@swiftkenya.com

	Copyright © MMIV . The Standard Group

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INTERNATIONAL

Zambia's President Promises to Provide More AIDS Drugs
By MICHAEL WINES

JOHANNESBURG, Oct. 24 - Zambia's president has pledged to make good on a promise to extend antiretroviral drug treatment to 100,000 AIDS sufferers by the end of 2005, up vastly from the current 12,000, despite a health-care system crippled by mounting financial problems.

In a national address on Saturday, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Zambian independence, President Levy Mwanawasa said a growing population and recent economic problems had "reduced the capacity for the government to maintain quality health services" even as AIDS-related sicknesses were on the rise.

"The impact on the health care delivery system is enormous, with 50 percent of hospital beds occupied by patients with H.I.V.- and AIDS-related illnesses," he said. "There is not enough money to spend on social services such as health."

He nevertheless said that the goal of reaching 100,000 Zambians with free or subsidized antiretroviral drugs, first announced in September, would be met.

More than one million of Zambia's 10 million citizens carry the virus that causes AIDS, including one in six adults. About 200,000 are in an advanced stage of AIDS-related ailments and would benefit from antiretroviral treatment.

The government once hoped to have 70,000 of its citizens on antiretrovirals by the end of this year, but the rollout of the lifesaving anti-AIDS drugs has proceeded markedly slower than expected. The first major donations of money from the Global Fund to Fights AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria came this year, as well as the beginnings of a White House program, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has expanded drug treatment in the capital, Lusaka.

Japan announced early this month that it was increasing its donation to Zambia for AIDS relief. In September, Zambia's Commerce Ministry declared the AIDS pandemic to be a national emergency, an act required under international agreements to permit the cheaper domestic production of patented antiretroviral drugs.

But the government is in a race against the pandemic, with long-latent H.I.V. infections developing into AIDS at an ever-quicker pace and AIDS deaths exacting an ever-greater toll on the economy.

In an appeal last week for $404 million in international donations to forestall famine in southern Africa, the World Food Program warned that AIDS was dramatically worsening hunger in the region by killing farm workers and laborers who bring food to market.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Mozambique and Zambia face hunger, despite above-average harvests in the region, because they are unable to gain access to harvested food, the agency stated.

The government has said that it expects to spend $500 million through 2010 on AIDS treatment programs. But with Zambia's economy increasingly on the skids, it is not clear where much of that money will be found. Mr. Mwanawasa said in his Saturday address that his government would continue a stringent economic program on which the International Monetary Fund has conditioned a promise to write off $3.8 billion of the nation's $7 billion foreign debt next year.

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Farmers Fail to Get Access to Aids Drugs

October 25, 2004

Dismus Buregyeya
Kampala

THE Masaka district HIV/AIDS committee has refused to recommend the district farmers association to access money from the global AIDS fund.

The committee chairman, Yusuf Ssenteza, said they refused to sign the memorandum of understanding for Masaka district farmers' association because of internal leadership conflicts.

The association passed a censure motion against their chairman, Maury Ssemambo, who referred the matter to court.

Ssenteza cited gross misuse and embezzlement of funds by the officials in the association.

"We cannot recommend an organisation which has no clear leadership. we have so far refused to sign a memorandum of understanding with it," he said.

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Africa: Double Impact of TB And Aids Threatens Millions

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U.N. Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Launches Stop AIDS Project Calling on U.K. Government To Increase AIDS Funding
[Oct 27, 2004]

U.N. Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis on Tuesday in London launched a Stop AIDS Campaign project to urge British Prime Minister Tony Blair to use the United Kingdom's upcoming presidency of the Group of Eight to lobby for increased funding to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa, BBC News reports.

Lewis said that a lack of resources "threatens" the World Health Organization's 3 by 5 Initiative (BBC News, 10/26).

The initiative aims to treat three million HIV-positive people with antiretroviral drugs by 2005 "The international community has been focusing on prevention for years," Lewis said, adding, "What we have not done yet is provide treatment, give people hope and encourage them to get tested. This is what generates a sense of prevention. The two go together inseparably." Lewis said that although there is a "real momentum" to provide antiretroviral drug treatment to HIV-positive people in Africa, there is a "lack of money," according to BBC News. "If they can maintain the resources, then these countries are going to break through and the whole world will finally have a sense that we can turn this pandemic around," Lewis said (BBC News, 10/26). He added, "If Tony Blair wants to turn the G8 on its head, he can do so. It didn't happen in Canada. It didn't happen in Japan. It can presumably happen in the U.K." (Woodcock, Scotsman, 10/26). The G8 includes the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia .
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