HIV & ME

   

(This is a little something I wrote for the latest issue of simaid’s magazine, imagine. I’ve been wanting to write this, Smith’s story - for years, and was thrilled with the opportunity to do so! To download the mag with the article, or check out some back issues – click here!)

His name was Smith. It was November 2009, rural Papua New Guinea. The sun was hot, the people were lining up for our health care clinic and we, my team and I - were scattered around the place; sitting on the dirt floor, cross-legged amongst our stethoscopes and ‘Where There Is No Doctor’s’.

I, just 18 and completely thrown into the deep end was seeing a patient, a woman – probably in her 40s – when she pushed to me a very little boy. A very special boy, which rocked my world and changed my life forever. 

His name was Smith. He was a tiny little man, with the body of a four year old. I guess he was 10 or 11. He was an orphan, she told me, and his brothers were away. 

Smith and I.

He was severely malnourished, he had a belly full of worms and his skin was covered in scabies. His eyes were dull and as I listened to his chest, I gravely suspected tuberculosis. Where do I even start, was all I could think as the crowds drew in around me.

HIV. We had learnt about it in health class and I even knew what it stood for; human immunodeficiency virus. I knew that in some parts of Papua New Guinea 40% of the population were infected. I knew how it was transmitted, and treated, and I half suspected that during my travels I would come across a case or two. But then there was Smith. This little, brittle boy and his breathtaking smile.

This was the first time I came across HIV with a human face and not as a statistic, and it broke me. I rubbed cream on his scabies, prescribed him a worm tablet and prayed my little heart out – skin on skin. I looked him in the eye, and tried to make him smile. And when he left, I walked over to our pharmacy and I cried.

HIV. The acronym had taken on a new meaning for me from that point, and has done so ever since. My heart broke for him that day, not just out of my own helplessness, but the sheer injustice of the whole situation; I was filled, am filled, with a sense of this should not be. As I learn and read more about it, in preparation for my year with Orange HOPE, and my time in Malawi – I’m growing to understand just a little bit more; its overwhelming presence in the world, its scientific makeup, the process of infection, the subtypes, the risks, the statistics, the search for a vaccine, the prevention programs, the stigma; all of it. But for me, it all comes back to Smith. 

the little man, munching on some sago.

HIV is the worst. It ruins nations and generations and families and children, the pregnant, the sick, the unborn, the strong, the poor, the vulnerable. It’s both preventable and treatable, and yet 95% of new cases occur in the developing world. It is therefore unjust, and its roots run deep. For one quarter of the world, living in a state of absolute poverty is their single greatest health determinant, and thus defines their susceptibility to HIV. The cruel reality is then that HIV and AIDS is both caused by and exacerbates conditions of poverty. HIV is thus so much more then biological, and runs deeply along social, class, caste, race, gender, historical and national lines. It’s messy, it’s complicated, it’s more then it seems.

As the 2012 Ambassador for Orange HOPE I’m entrusted with inspiring others to raise much needed funds for those infected and affected with HIV, and under the care of SIM’s Hope For Aids Malawi programs. I’m faced with the questions; how do I get people to care about HIV? Especially young people, of my own generation? Personally, I’m growing to understand just a little bit more. I’m growing to care a great deal more, and I’m building a heart and a story – hopefully – which is engaging, contagious and inspiring. And that’s the only place I know where to start.

1 in 8 adults in Malawi have HIV. There are around 1.2 million HIV and AIDS orphans, within a population of only 15 million. How do I even begin to take that information in? When this is just one country, and each of these statistics is a beloved, created, intricate and amazing human being? In finding out I want to do something, and find my place in all of this. HIV is bigger then me, and I’m just beginning to fully take that statement in.

I don’t know where to start other then with my own heart. And this is why I care. I don’t claim to know everything about HIV, far from it – I am completely aware that I know basically nothing, and that my experiences come from a few, short isolated incidents and many hours snuggled with academic books in my warm, safe, Sydney home. But this is my beginning. And when I boil it down; the facts, the figures, the symptoms, the spread, for me, it all comes back to Smith.