South Africa: about aids and societal trust
In South Africa, each day 1,000 people die of Aids and 1,900 people are infected with HIV. That is what Hugo Tempelman tells us. Hugo is a doctor who moved to South Africa in 1990. An interesting detail is that Salem and Hugo were classmates back in secondary school. Hugo runs an Aids clinic with 290 employees. Working with patients is his contribution to a better society. His message is: to build a country you must look at the children and focus on two topics: their health and their education.
In Hugo’s opinion each patient is a failure and every dead patient is unnecessary. He explains: ‘If you’re tested negative, you don’t have a ticket for tomorrow, only knowledge about the past. If you’re tested positive, than you do have a ticket for tomorrow. Only it’s not such a good one. However, you can be treated. That means taking medicine for the rest of your life, day in and day out. Then HIV is stabilized. It sounds like music, but the problem is lack of discipline to stick to the treatment. Besides people often live too far away from the clinic to attend an appointment. He concluded that 20 kilometres is the maximum radius for a successful treatment.
Hugo’s specialty is to reach people with his Rural Advancement Programme. He has built his own logistics. By doing so he has even improved parts of the existing system in South Africa so that the government decided to use his method. He is pretty successful. But the problem is so huge. In South Africa, 1 out of 5 is infected with HIV. In his clinic 70% of the patients are tested positive. 1 out of 4 pregnant women he sees, have Aids. The stories are heartbreaking.
Because of diseases like Aids the average age in South Africa has dropped from 68 to 37. One wonders what this demographical shift does to a country. Of course you need children to build a country, but you also need a strong middle aged group to guide a country. Unfortunately the government in South Africa who decides about national Aids policy, lacks specialists who can design a good programme. Former prime minister Mbeke denied the Aids problem entirely. He declared that there was no relation between HIV and Aids. That lead to a fall back in governmental aids policy.
Besides demography, there is another theme that must have it’s effect on South African society. So many people are infected. The chance to come across HIV is big. People keep on sleeping with each other unprotected, knowing that they are taking a life threatening risk.
What effect does this all have on trust. Both individual trust and societal trust. Trust is a basic need to build a country.
Compared to the problems that South Africa faces, the problems in Holland are marginal. Let us not lose our own trust and let us connect to other countries, them we van help each other.
