The fight must continue.....

Last night I felt a deep sense of defeat, everything in fact is going very well, better then ever to be honest. But last night through the phone I heard a cough, one that I am familiar with, the deep cough of Tuberculosis (TB). This serious illness that effects many people in the community of Thembalethu. TB has been around for centuries, it used to be called consumption and it is an illness that attacks the lungs and other parts of the body such as the kidneys, bones and lymph nodes.

TB attacks regions where HIV/AIDS is rampant which is why it is no surprise that South Africa is ranked as having the 5th highest rate of TB in the world. This country also has the #1 highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world. With a electricity, water and food crisis already affecting this country I fear for the future of the people already infected, their bodies are already lacking the nutrition possible to fight off these two illnesses.

TB has reached inside my protective bubble and effected someone close to me. I think that on top of fighting for food and education for this community I am also going to start researching into ways to prevent infection. I have already collected information on HIV/AIDS to pass along to the community, with this highest rate in the world I plan to educate this community on how the disease is spread, and how it is not. I think now I need to do the same for TB.

In the developed world we do not hear much about of this disease, we have an enormous access to medicine, perhaps too much access. In the developing world however people are dying because these same medicines such as antibiotics are not available to them.

I will keep fighting for this community, in all the joy that the people here bring to me, the life purpose that I have found within the dirt roads, I will not rest until the people living here can have a day of rest, just one, where HIV, TB, hunger, water and apartheid are over there in the distance, just one day where together we can laugh and sing and dance together and forget the problems of the past. I will continue to fight for that one day.

http://www.sahealthinfo.org/tb/tbburden.htm

http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/global_health/id/tuberculosis/countries/africa/safrica_profile.html