Day 154, The Blessing in Disguise

Day 154, Sometimes things that afflict us on a grand scale may end up working to benefit all of society. In this respect has HIV actually being a blessing for South Africa?

There is the old adage about distance bringing perspective and I have come to realise how true this is. On my holiday away from Mseleni, I spent time in India. My ancestral home is in the village of Sonamukhi, a four hour drive from the Calcutta, and though the distances may not compare the ‘rurality’ is similar to Mseleni.

I took an afternoon to visit the local hospital. It serves a population close to 200,000 but is half the size of Mseleni. There are separate male and female wards but no designated paediatric section. The OPD in Mseleni always seems brutally busy and harsh on the patients but at least they get cubicles most of the time. In Sonamukhi the OPD queue resembles a food line, and the patients gather round a writing bureau with 3 or 4 doctors scribbling nonchalantly as they present their cards. History and examination are a pragmatic sacrifice.

With a burgeoning economy in the face of real poverty there are many similarities to South Africa, begging the question as to why the health service in India is lagging behind. With TB rife in both settings the main difference is with HIV. Not as open and as widely disseminated HIV often gets swept under the rug in rural India. It is on the rise, and with such poor provision of free healthcare and the prevalence of TB it is surely a time bomb.

So how has HIV benefitted South Africa? Primarily because it has become such a well publicised epidemic it has attracted much foreign aid. The free antiretroviral program has been sponsored by USAID as has much of the provision infrastructure. Particularly with the latter provision of other healthcare has been piggy backed. Now because there is staff to look after the provision of ARVs they also monitor for diabetes and hypertension.

Of course the HIV aid money isn’t exclusively propping up South Africa’s health system, but it certainly helped to kick start it and now ensures it is a more robust rural health provision. The worry is that with HIV rates rising in India without it becoming much more open a similar augmenting of rural health services will not arrive in time to save the a much larger number of people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3qVl8Gb2J4