SOWETO, South Africa, Dec 2 (AFP) - A plethora of AIDS support groups are helping South Africans cope with their illness in Soweto, stepping into a breach left by the national government.
Volunteers are picking up the baton in the fight against AIDS affecting 6.5 million South Africans, or one in seven, through non-governmental organisations helped by local officials.
In Soweto, the VuSabantu clinic, which means Awake the people in Zulu, was set up last year with help from local members of the governing African National Congress (ANC), South African and French nationals.
"This was a political decision, a desire to set things straight after the bad stance taken by the president and the health minister," says Sophie Marechal, the director of the clinic.
President Thabo Mbeki drew fire in 2000 when he questioned the link between HIV and AIDS and whether anti-retrovirals (ARV) were effective in treating the illness.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, a trained medical doctor, has proposed a treatment of beetroot, garlic, lemon and olive oil to combat HIV.
VuSabantu hands out free ARVs to 159 patients thanks to a 50,000-euro grant from Paris mayor's office, another initiative highlighting grassroots local involvement in the AIDS struggle.
They are among the 85,000 who are currently enrolled in the government's free national ARV program, out of an estimated 500,000 South Africans who are in need of treatment.
VuSabantu provides home-based care with volunteers like Patrick Mokgomoli, 33 and his wife Nthabeleng, 31, who lost their seven-year-old daughter to AIDS.
"We want to help people like us," said Patrick. "We do home visiting to check if people are taking the treatment properly."
Alice Morie's husband died of AIDS in 2002 and she was left with three children.
Morie, 35, says she is not taking ARVs for the time being as her immune system is still holding up but she has found a way to make ends meet through "Designing Hope", an organisation that produces beadwork.
She is one of about a dozen women who make little bead guitars and other items that are sold in upmarket shops in Europe and the United States.
There are also t-shirts that read "I love you positive or negative" embroidered by women in Swaziland that are designed to fight stigmatization of people living with HIV and AIDS.
"Maybe in five, ten years, HIV-AIDS will be like any disease, like when you have a cold and you can talk about it," said Mokgomoli.
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