Everyday is Mandela Day
Simelane is from rural Madabukela near Piet Retief in the province’where schools and jobs are scarce, says the 31-year-old community health care worker with the Zamokuhle Home-Based Care organisation.
Madabukela lies in the province’s Gert Sibande District, in which about 40 percent of pregnant women are living with HIV, according to the country’s most recent antenatal HIV survey.
Nationally, only Gert Sibande District and KwaZulu-Natal’s uMgungundlovu District chart HIV prevalence rates of more than 40 percent among expecting mums.
Growing up, Simelane saw many around her die from AIDS-related illnesses and tuberculosis and says it led her to make a promise to herself.
“I knew by then that my dreams involve saving lives and helping those who are in need,” she told OurHealth. “I made a pact growing up that if I had an opportunity given to me to (join) one of the community home-base care groups, that I would join in a heartbeat.”
At the age of 24 years old, Simelane was given that chance and joined Zamokuhle Home-Based Care. That was seven years ago and she hopes that she will have many more years to come with the group.
As part of her work, Simelane works to close the gap between rural patients and far off clinics.
“Because some of our rural communities doesn’t have clinics which are nearby, people living with HIV, TB and other diseases find it difficult to attend the clinics as regularly as requested to by the health care workers,” she said. “Since I became one of the home-based carers, I have been assigned to support patients from the KwaNgema, Entombe and Kwamgodzi communities.”
A day on the job can include everything from supporting patients to stay on treatment, delivering chronic medication to patients’ doorsteps or counseling patients about the dangers of mixing some medications with traditional medicines.
She also says about three decades into South Africa’s HIV epidemic, some continue to mistakenly believe that traditional medicines can cure the virus.
What’s between patients and pills? The bottle
Substance abuse also continues to be a major challenge among patients on antiretrovirals (ARVs).
“Substance abuse is one of the reasons why some of our clients are defaulting because when the consuming too much alcohol they have the tendency to forget to take their ARVs on time,” she added.[quote float=”right”]”This month to some is about celebrating and using 67 minutes to giving back to communities but for me giving back is my daily life’s work”
Fikile Dlamini from KwaNgema has been living with HIV for almost six years.
People living with HIV are at an increased risk of developing active tuberculosis (TB) and the Department of Health estimates that about 60 percent of TB patients are co-infected with HIV.
Last year, Dlamini became one of them. Simelane helped him stay on TB treatment.
“It has been difficult to adhere to my TB treatment because of alcohol,” Dlamini admitted. “After four months on treatment I started feeling better and I just stopped collecting my treatment because I thought I was fine.”
“The clinic had to put me on treatment again and the home-based carers have been supporting me,” he said.
While patience is a virtue, Simelane admits she gets frustrated with patients like Dlamini.
“Being human, some days I get frustrated because some clients don’t take HIV, sexually transmitted infections and TB seriously, but that wouldn’t make me abandoned them because they have become my friends and family,” she added.
Nurse Steven Ndlangamandla says home-based carers like Simelane play a crucial part in helping trace patients and making sure patients stay on the treatment they need to get better.
“Working with Zamokuhle Home-Based Care has made things easier at our side because our patients are traced and brought back to the facility,” he said. “(The carers’) hard work must be highly appreciated because without them more patients would continue defaulting and eventually die of AIDS-related illnesses.”
For Simelane, every day is Mandela Day.
“This month to some is about celebrating and using 67 minutes to giving back to communities but for me giving back is my daily life’s work,” she told OurHealth. “We should teach ourselves to give back our time every day.”
Author
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
Everyday is Mandela Day
by cynthiamaseko, Health-e News
July 25, 2014
Related
Ups and downs of bipolar disorder
Mpumalanga – Ndumiso Prince Cele turned to alcohol and drugs in an attempt to cope with the “shame” of suffering from bipolar disorder.
Ill woman’s ‘sangoma trauma’
When she was 28, Isabell Gama from Emanyeveni in Mpumalanga thought that the tingling in her feet was due to idlozi; her ancestors were calling her to become a sangoma but she had not answered the call.
Surviving stigma against all odds
MPUMALANGA – Traditional medicine, cultural respect, HIV and TB infections are among the many issues that compounded and confused things for a young mother.