We never knew her real name, nor did we need to. Her message was clear, powerful, an anguished cry from the heart that echoed not only her own deep-seated pain in fighting HIV/Aids, but that of a nation that has waited too long for help.
Senator Bill Frist, kingpin in the four-country Africa mission to ensure that $15-billion in American Aids relief money is used effectively, described it as "one of the most deeply moving moments" in his life.
Crammed into a corner of a medical ward at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital on the outskirts of Soweto, the leader of the US senate majority said he felt "humbled" by what he had heard. "I listened to this young mother. I saw her tears and the fear in her eyes. To see and hear these things first hand is something one can never forget."
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Although on anti-retrovirals, paid for out of her limited earnings, the mother said she was "praying" that assistance was near. "I have a beautiful nine-year-old child. I want to see him grow up. I want to love and care for him."
| 'I saw her tears and the fear in her eyes' |
For the six senators, and their entourage of American senate delegates this was a historic occasion, a first for many of them as they came face to face with the cutting edge pressures experienced by those infected and affected by the disease and those who work toalleviate their suffering.
The Gauteng experience, which could signal a fast-track funding lifeline for South Africa and 14 Aids-ravaged countries, began at the Chris Hani Baragwanath
Hospital, the largest hospital in the world with 3 000 beds, occupied in the main by those with Aids-related infections.
Setting the scene, Professor James McIntyre, director of peri-natal research, and hospital staff described the work they were doing in such areas as the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, voluntary counselling and testing, and the establishment of a wellness clinic.
The delegates heard how more babies could be saved if earlier and more costly treatment interventions were in place, how the few lucky enough to receive treatment had shown an 85% compliance with limited side effects, and how 20 times as many people could be treated if the process were scaled up.
According to Dr Joseph O'Neill, a key member of the senate delegation and the Global Aids co-ordinator at the US Department of State, it was the sort of information that the senators needed to take back to President George Bush, who is looking at the South African visit with "enormous and keen" interest.
Busing through the sprawling areas of Soweto, the senators listened enthralled by the minutiae of this swathe of life - twice as many inhabitants as Botswana, 60% have electricity, 100 percent have radios, 80 percent have televisions, 30 percent cellphones, and all have clean drinking water.
The next stop was the Salvation Army's Carl Sithole Centre in Soweto for vulnerable children, a linking care and treatment facility for Chris Hani Baragwanath.
Here the senators learnt of the outreach programmes that bring assistance and care to abused and abandoned children, and how such programmes could be expanded with resources and funding.
And if pulling power was needed, the children provided it as senators joined in singing a selection of popular nursery rhymes.
But the spectre of Aids remains a shadow even in a child's world.
Beneath a tree is a marble shrine which remembers the children who have not made it. A glint of winter sunshine glistens on the top name, baby "Peace" Khotso who died aged two.
As Senator Mike Enzi, who fills a dual role as a United Nations delegate, put it: "Words capture a thousand pictures, but pictures like these need no words."
The mechanisms required for rolling out anti-retroviral treatment for the thousands who currently need it in South Africa are, in Frist's words, "the key questions".
It was now the turn of Anglo American to provide the visitors with some of the answers they needed. Flanked by the gold mine workings at Carltonville, the great mountains of dust and stone and the tall structures of mine shafts, senators were welcomed to the Western Deep Levels Hospital for a first-hand view of a facility that is providing a pioneering anti-retroviral treatment programme for all its staff.
But it was in the Anglo Boardroom that the real core issues of Aids funding were spelt out, of what can and what cannot be done, how it should be done, and who should do it. There are no short cuts, no pulling of punches from either side.
"Anti-retrovirals have madepeople well and put them back to work," says Anglo's Dr Gavin Churchyard.
But the truth is that the process is time-consuming and labour intensive.
However Anglo believes that its standardised model of care and treatment and experience in issues surrounding migrant families could be expanded and adapted to any given setting.
The senators said they were "impressed" with what they had heard and felt there was honesty "on both sides" of the table.
But if there were to be decisions on the way forward, this was not the time to state them.
"We have taken note of everything we have seen and heard and it will go before the senate in two weeks' time," said Frist.
The six senators on the Africa mission are Bill Frist, senate majority leader John Warner, chairman of the armed services committee Mike DeWine, member of the intelligence committee and appropriation committee Mike Enzi, member of the foreign relations committee Norm Coleman, and member of the foreign relations committee and chairman of the sub committee on African affairs Lamar Alexander. - Independent News Network
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