Township deaths in Cape Town

I received devastating news late last night: Lusindiso “Max” a young man I worked with through a photographic training project here in Cape Town has died. Max had a heart condition and that is likely why he died, but as with so many deaths in Africa, there is more mystery than clarity as to the cause of death. Hopefully an autopsy will shed more light. He died the night before he was due for his regular treatment at the hospital, suddenly, after seeming quite well. Questions remain as to whether his treatments were too far spaced out, and whether his death was avoidable.

Max was a bright spark of energy, filled with joy and affection, on a path to a creative and successful life. He was in university, studying filmmaking, and he and his “partner-in-crime” Vusi were always working on or dreaming up projects. They did everything together – from church to their studies to their photographic training. I was looking forward to seeing what they would end up creating individually and together with their burst of literary and creative energies.

Max is the 3rd tragic death I’ve experienced in Cape Town in the past year – all people I’ve worked with or know from the townships. Thembi was the first. After doing a radio diary about her life with AIDS (http://www.aidsdiary.org), Thembi became a sort of poster child for getting tested and living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa. She was on many PSAs in South Africa, and even spoke on panels in the US with former President Bill Clinton. She was taking her meds and doing well. Unfortunately Thembi was suddenly hospitalized with TB and in a very short span of time died from the disease. Apparently the TB strain was drug resistent, and of course as an HIV infected person, her immune system was compromised, but still, if she had access to better healthcare, she may have had a different outcome.

The second death was the mother of a girl I work with on a radio/mentorship project in the Khayelitsha township. Her mom sold chickens in the township for a living and was a single parent struggling to provide for her family, often not even having enough money to send her daughter to school. Apparently, she had suffered with diabetes, and this may have been connected with her death (the information here was murky), but there remains the very real possibility that if she had proper medical treatment, her daughter would not have become an orphan at age 16.

Another girl I work with has recently had a very painful cough and luckily for her it didn’t turn out to be something serious like TB. She didn’t get tested or treated as she has no medical insurance and she didn’t go to the community clinic despite being very sick because she says it would involve waiting in a line all day starting from 4am if one wanted to be seen that day. (A scene in the film “Yesterday” highlights this scenario.)

South Africa of course has a resource problem, but if there were more clinics, and people had access to care to manage their daily health, those clinics/doctors etc could also provide critical healthcare education (esp related to HIV/AIDS) to their patients and could encourage people to get tested while there!

But the availability of quality medical care here is very much lacking for the masses and when you start to have more people from poorer communities in your community of friends, you realize the impact. For me, it’s been three deaths this past year, but I know a woman who runs a community center in a township here and she seems to be at a funeral every other week!

I heard a statistic today that 1,000 people are newly infected with HIV every day in South Africa. I don’t know if this is correct but all the numbers paint a very bleak picture: 390,000 children in sub-saharan africa being infected with HIV in 2008, around 10-11% of the entire population of South Africa living with HIV, and this number gets as high as 18% when only considering the 15-49 age group!

Instead of just trying to suck every last penny from South Africa’s poorest by tempting people with sweepstakes prizes for those who send in high-cost sms’es, why don’t companies like the cellphone provider MTN who is able to smother the African market with their soccer world cup marketing so much so that “ayoba (sweet/cool)” is now a part of local vocabulary send sms’es to their subscribers with incentives for people who get tested for HIV? Offer them free sms’es or airtime (it really costs MTN little to nothing-if MTN needs an incentive, how’s this?: Once someone dies,they’re no longer buying your airtime!) or enter them into a drawing? Or instead of vodacom sending out dozens of sms’es to its customers about vodacom promotions, why not send out a clear health related message from time to time? Clearly we need to be more innovative if we are ever going to slow the tide of AIDS which is drowning Africa.

And this is not just about AIDS. This is about life and healthcare everywhere. In a country like the US where there are enough resources, it amazes me how some people can still argue against ensuring that all Americans should have access to decent healthcare, healthcare that can allow them to treat diabetes before it becomes deadly, or get lifesaving surgery when necessary. Are informed and experienced specialists or diagnostic tests a luxury only for those who have money or employment health benefits? It’s bad enough that people living in poverty often live in conditions that do not support health (asbestos shacks, cold living spaces, non-nutritional diets), but then when they are sick, do we close the door to recovery on them?

Yes, some deaths are unpreventable, but others are preventable and when politics, corruption or special interests block people from access to diagnosis and treatment, we should surely question ourselves and our hearts !

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