Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) - October 19, 2001
Khadija Magardie
The soft-spoken woman says simply: "When I see them together, so happy, I ask myself time and time again, why did this happen?"
Her daughter, Sibongile, is HIV-positive. So is her six-month-old grandchild, Tinashe. The baby was born with the virus, or contracted it shortly after her birth in April at Rob Ferreira hospital in Nelspruit.
A whitish rash on the baby's bulbous cheeks are the only sign she is not healthy.
Sibongile, who looks even younger than her 19 years, wants to be a fashion designer when - she emphasises it's not an "if" - she finishes matric. She found out she was HIV-positive in 1998, but didn't tell anyone, fearing the community in which she lived would isolate her.
Throughout her pregnancy, during which she attended regular antenatal classes at the Ka-Nyamazane clinic at Rob Ferreira, Sibongile was never asked about her HIV status. Despite taking routine blood tests, the nurses gave her none of her results.
And during her three-day labour and immediately afterwards, she was never told there were drugs that could help to prevent passing on HIV to her baby. Sibongile feels she was cheated.
But she is speaking out for her child and, she says, thousands of women like her who feel as her own mother does - helpless as their children slowly die. With the help of the Aids Law Project, Nelspruit lawyer Richard Spoor this week announced litigation against the province's health authorities on behalf of Tinashe.
In an unprecedented legal action Spoor's letter of demand, served on Mpumalanga Health MEC Sibongile Manana, instructs that Manana - in her capacity as the employer of the healthcare workers at Rob Ferreira hospital - pay damages of R700,000 to Tinashe as a result of the hospital's negligence, or face a summons.
If it goes to trial, the case could have dramatic consequences for the government's policy of non-provision of drugs that could reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV in public sector hospitals and clinics.
Though the government has repeatedly announced plans to roll out a programme in public hospitals providing the drug Nevirapine for HIV-positive pregnant women - Rob Ferreira hospital, like most others countrywide, still does not.
Tinashe's case rests on a single principle - negligence. Spoor says hospital staff had a duty of care - and, given the high prevalence of HIV, failing to adequately inform patients of their options was inexcuseable.
The nurses could have done much more, he says. Like giving Sibongile information on HIV during her antenatal classes. Or prescribing vitamin supplements - Veronica says Sibongile was clearly weak and emaciated during her pregnancy. Or reducing the risk of transmission during labour by performing a caesarian section.
Even if they didn't know her status, Spoor argues, they should have taken the necessary precautions.
Sibongile says the very least that could have been done for her was to be told Nevirapine existed, and referred to a place where she could buy it to attempt to prolong her daughter's life.
When her daughter was in the labour ward, Veronica says she approached a doctor and asked him what could be done. "Nothing," he said. "I am told it [Nevirapine] is only R30," she says, shaking her head.
But at the end of the day, Sibongile says sadly, the silence will have been victorious. Holding her child in her arms, she says neither money nor drugs will keep Tinashe alive "long enough to pass her matric, to get married and do all the things that a healthy girl or woman dreams of doing".
* Surname withheld
011019
MG011011
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