Organizations fighting HIV/AIDS in Swaziland were at first incredulous at reports that hundreds of impoverished HIV-positive rural residents were eating cow dung to give their stomachs something to digest before taking their antiretrovirals (ARVs), the IRIN news agency reports.
‘It seemed too sensational to me when I first heard it, but then an MP stood up in parliament and said it was in his area that people on ARVs were doing this,’ said Wandile Khoza, an AIDS activist in Swaziland’'s central commercial hub Manzini. ‘It has come to this; the food insecurity most Swazis are experiencing has come up against the world’s highest HIV prevalence rate.’
The Swaziland National Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (SWANNEPHA) confirmed that some of its members were consuming cow dung after MP Josephs Souza of rural Lugongolweni reported first-hand knowledge of the practice following visits to his HIV-positive constituents.
‘A rural health motivator took me to one of the patients on ARVs who is among those that now mix cow dung with water and then eat it before taking the tablets,’ the MP told parliament.
‘We have resorted to eating rubbish for purposes of taking our ARVs because they must be consumed after a meal,’ said SWANNEPHA in a statement.
MBABANE — About 100 Swazi AIDS activists yesterday (21 July 2011) marched to the finance ministry to demand that the kingdom not allow a crippling financial crisis to interrupt the supply of life-saving drugs.
The AIDS activists were joined by labour leaders and representatives of the banned Pudemo opposition party, who rallied behind the call to salvage the country's floundering health system.
"We are seeing the health sector crumbling," said Vusi Nxumalo of the Swaziland's National Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS.
"There is a problem with procurement, supply and service delivery," said Nxumalo, who organised the march organisers.
Swaziland has the world's highest HIV infection rate, with one in four adults carrying the virus.
According to Nxumalo, about 64,000 people depend on state-issued drugs.
Donors finance the purchase of much of Swaziland's supply of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs used to battle AIDS, but the government is struggling to keep its health services open.
Last year Swaziland saw a 60 percent drop in revenues from a regional customs union, the government's main source of income.
A new formula in how revenues are distributed saw Swaziland's share slashed, a change the kingdom failed to budget for.
The tiny kingdom, Africa's last absolute monarchy, has drained its foreign reserves to pay salaries, but can't afford fuel for government vehicles to distribute supplies or provide social services.
"People shouldn't be afraid. I know when you say you are broke, people think you won't help," said Health Minister Benedict Xaba.
"Government is doing its best to make sure that ARVs are available. We won't be scaling down," he told AFP.
Even small protests were once rare in Swaziland, but since April anger at the financial crisis has sparked a series of demonstrations against the rule of King Mswati III, who is criticised for his lavish lifestyle in one of the world's poorest countries.
Some HIV patients in Swaziland are so poor they are forced to eat cow dung to fill their stomachs before they can take life-saving ARV drugs.
They mix the dung with water to help them digest it.
ARV drugs do not work on an empty stomach, so patients have to use the dung to line their stomachs. They are too poor to afford food and they don’t often get handouts from international aid agencies which work across Swaziland trying to keep people from starving.
The Swaziland Network of People with HIV and AIDS (SWANNEPHA) reported that people in the drought-stricken Lubombo are particularly affected.
Siyabonga Sithole, the SWANNEPHA field officer in Shiselweni region, confirmed to the Swazi Observernewspaper that some people relied on cow dung before taking the medication.
Joseph Souza, the Lugongolweni MP, told the newspaper he had personally met people who eat dung before taking their ARV tablets.
He told the newspaper that people were going hungry and there were not enough food hampers from aid agencies to cater for the ‘thousands of needy people’ who needed them.
The newspaper reported him saying, ‘In some areas, for instance under my constituency, we find ourselves having to distribute one 50kg bag of meal-meal to 10 families. You can then imagine how much each family takes home from this.’
Thembi Nkambule, director of SWANNEPHA, said it was heart breaking to hear people forced to eat cow dung.
‘What I know is that there were worse things that people on ARVs ended up taking lately just to have something in their stomachs for the medication to settle. That others have opted to take cow dung is very disturbing and it’s an indication of how bad the situation has become,’ the Observer reported him saying.
About 70 percent of the Swazi population are so poor they live in abject poverty, earning less than US$2 a day. At least one third of the 1 million population of the kingdom receive some form of donor food aid each year. Swaziland is ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, who was reported by Forbes in 2009 to have a personal fortune of US$ 200 million. He has 13 wives, and each has a palace paid for by the Swazi people.
While AIDS groups are forced to close because their funds have been cut, money is flowing at an increasing rate to King Mswati III and his royal family.
News emerged yesterday (19 April 2011) that groups set up to help Swaziland people living with HIV and AIDS are about to close because they are no longer getting financial support, even though Swaziland’s HIV rate of 26.1 percent is the highest in the world.
A report from IRIN said that one AIDS group, the Swaziland AIDS Support Organisation (SASO), was about to close due to lack of funds. The report said 600,000 people in a population in Swaziland of roughly one million had benefited from community outreach programmes run by SASO, or support organizations SASO has helped organize.
SASO is about to grind to a halt. Previous financial benefactors, including the Swazi Government, have had to cut back or eliminate their assistance in the wake of economic meltdown in Swaziland.
Last week, the Swaziland National Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS (SWANNEPHA), the umbrella body with which SASO works closely, announced at a press conference that it was also facing imminent closure if new sources of funding were not found.
SWANNEPHA receives its funding from the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, via Swaziland’s National Emergency Response Council on HIV and AIDS (NERCHA). SWANNEPHA had its budget reduced from US$130,000 (E882,000) in 2008 to $100,000 in 2009.
But, while money cannot be found to keep the HIV AIDS support groups going, the same cannot be said about money for King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.
In February this year (2011) the budget for King Mswati and the royal household was raised by E40 million (US$5.88 million) for the coming year. By comparison the US$130,000 for SWANNEPHA is a drop in the ocean.
But it doesn’t end there. This is for the second consecutive year that the budget for King Mswati Royal increased by E40 million - in the 2010/11 financial year, the royal budget went from E130 million to E170 million.
The greed of King Mswati and the royal family seems to know no bounds. The Nation magazine reported this month (April 2011) that the King’s office spent about E13 million ($1. 8 million) on internal decor for three of the royal guest houses.
The decor include furniture, curtains, carpet, wood floor and cladding, bathrooms, artwork and accessories, sound system, multi media system, TV, phones and water meters.
On top of this, E125 million a year is regularly allocated for the rehabilitation, maintenance and construction of state houses. And E25 million is available for link roads to royal residences.
Yesterday was the King’s 43rd birthday and next week is the 25th anniversary of his victory in a power struggle within Swaziland that saw him crowned king.
You might therefore be pleased to know that the budget for the Celebrations Office is E12.5 million – roughly 14 times the annual budget of SWANNEPHA.
