InterPress News Service (IPS); Sunday, 21 April 1996.
Patience Rusere

"Once they see your card that says you are HIV positive then everybody starts treating you funny. Even the clerk whose job is just to stamp cards had the nerve to ask me how I contracted AIDS," says Chimusoro, who has just come out of hospital.

"There is no privacy at all, the nurses shout at you and give you lessons on morality. I was refused anesthetic for my operation to treat haemhorrhoids because they told me they couldn't waste it on Aids patients," says Chinusoro, who discovered she as suffering from the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) after the death of her daughter in 1987.

Lyn Francis, a counsellor for People Living With Aids (PWA), has also witnessed victamisation in Zimbabwe's hospitals. "One ... Aids patient was left to sit in a very long queue while sweating and vomiting. It took them seven hours to attend to him, when they just gave him some panadols (paracetemol) and sent him home."

According to the National Aids Coordination Programme (NACP), 48,882 lives have been lost to the HIV virus which causes AIDS between 1987 to September 1995. An average of 300 people die of AIDS-related causes each week, the health ministry has acknowledged.

The situation has worsened for people suffering from AIDS due to the cut backs by the government on health spending. As the number of patients increases, pressure is mounting on an already overstretched health care system.

"Although there is a general lack of an efficient health system all too often AIDS patients are perceived as somehow deserving, therefore they are ill treated. While the privately owned institutions are more caring because you pay them, they lack the element of hope " says Francis.

"The (government run hospitals) only act on TB cases because it is highly contagious. One doctor told me they could not give one patient, who had six blood cells left, blood. He told me it was useless to give blood to someone who was going to die anyway," she added.

But Callistic Madziwa, the acting superintendent of Parirenyatwa, one of the country's largest public referral centres, denies the allegations of discrimination.

"Those are nothing but malicious rumours. If any patient is sick we can admit (them) until they recover from any of the opportunistic illnesses they have and send them home," she insists.

"We only have problems with the patients' relatives who usually want to dump them on us. Besides, there are only a few beds which other patients need to make use off. Neither do we have the resources to keep a patient who can die today or in the next five years," Madziwa said.

Francis, who has been involved with Aids patients for a decade, however accuses government of ignoring calls for health personnel to be more sensitive towards Aids patients.

"They are only interested in prevention but not in dealing with those who are already affected," she believes.

However, Margaret Mehlomakulu, an assistant programme coordinator with the NACP told IPS that she is not aware of any problem regarding Aids victims and health workers.

"No formal complaint has been lodged with us but if this is going on, then once it is brought to our attention we will deal severely with the culprits," she stressed.

While Madziwa believes that home-based care is the best solution, Francis sees this as a way of dumping patients which the ministry of health cannot cope with on, by and large, women relatives.

"What we need are community-based programmes where the whole community is involved. Aids should be treated like any disease as if one is suffering from a headache, it should be treated just as that," says Francis. (END/IPS/PR/oa/96)

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