Taoiseach sees South Africa’s HIV/Aids crisis up close

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern came face to face with the horrifying scale of South Africa’s Aids crisis yesterday as he visited a hospice ward where five people had died of the disease in the previous 24 hours.

The Leratong facility, set up by Irish priest Fr Kieran Creagh, has just 18 beds, but provides the only care of its kind for a township of 500,000 people.

More than 40% of males aged between 18 and 45 in the shanty town, outside the capital Pretoria, are estimated to be infected with HIV.

Clearly moved by his visit to the patients, Mr Ahern announced additional aid of €10,000 to buy an electricity generator for the hospice, which had to cope without power for the day.

Fr Creagh, who nearly died after being shot three times by intruders from outside the area last year, thanked the Taoiseach for Irish Aid’s support, which has helped the clinic provide care for 654 people since it opened in July 2004.

Fr Creagh set up the hospice due to the appalling conditions in which local people were dying of HIV — usually on the ground in shacks with no running water or electricity and in great pain.

“Leratong means ‘place of love’ and that is what we hope we have created here. Every patient deserves to be treated with dignity and love. I was sickened to see the conditions people were dying in before this place existed,” said Fr Creagh.

Matron Remigia Tloubalta, who briefly trained in Ireland, said she wished the hospice had the funding to help more people.

“There is so much stigma still attached to HIV, people are scared to let people know they have it,” she said.

The average age of patients at the hospice is 25 and they usually die after two or three weeks in the facility.

“It takes its toll on us, it can be very traumatic seeing so many people die so quickly, but we give them all the care we can. Although this is a hospice, it is also a place of hope and we want it to help break down the stigma and allow people with HIV to see that it should be nothing to be ashamed of,” she said.

Though set up to allow HIV victims to die with dignity, some who have experienced the care at the facility have rallied and been able to return home and continue their lives.

About 40 volunteers work at the centre which costs €100,000 a year to run.

Staff at the facility sang to Mr Ahern the Sotho language hymn “many different tongues which they use to praise the lord” as he arrived and left.

Mr Ahern said Irish taxpayers should be proud of helping fund the initiative.

“Irish Aid has been able to help Fr Creagh with this project and we should all be proud of that. There is proper respect shown to the patients here and it gives their families the respite and support they need. All Irish taxpayers contribute to this and other aid work and it is very good that we do,” he said.

Ireland spends more than €100 million a year helping combat the spread of Aids in the developing world.