Article
There's much more at stake in the fight against HIV
About six million people in Africa are living with HIV. Every day another 2,000 or so individuals join their ranks – about as many as become infected in Germany in the course of an entire year. Every day the scourge costs an estimated 1,000 lives on the African continent. And only one in twenty of those living with HIV are receiving any sort of treatment.
"Every third child admitted to hospital here is infected, as is every third pregnant woman," Hippler reported to the Chancellor and the Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development. To prevent mother to child transmission and treat those living with HIV, he founded HOPE with the help of German and local supporters.
The approach taken by the project at Tygerberg Hospital is comprehensive. In addition to treating and counselling patients, the German doctors attach a great deal of importance to prevention. They know that the societal structures, a patriarchal view of women and poor hygiene all help spread the pandemic. Condoms provide protection. This is perhaps the most important piece of information that HOPE can pass on - to young women in particular. Along with condoms of course, male and female condoms.
Networked in the townships
HOPE works with various universities in the country and with non-governmental organisations. It has good connections to the townships.
The Chancellor was interested to know how traditional healers are reacting to the treatments offered. Traditional healers build to a large degree on spiritual advice from ancestors, which cannot amount to much in the case of AIDS. Stefan Hippler has found a way of winning them over. The ancestors, he argues, had no experience of a health problem on this scale. And that is indeed difficult to refute, given the situation in South Africa.
The HOPE Cape Town project offers HIV-positive children and their families medical treatment, social welfare and support. The aim of the project is to allow them to lead as normal a life as possible. The organisation acts wherever official agencies do not operate, or do not yet operate. HOPE also works in the fields of prevention, health education and cooperation with traditional healers.
