'Disease of the cursed' tightens grip on poorest

African Times

When Miriam Saaba's husband died 16 months ago from an illness which he had refused to have diagnosed, her family and friends said the "disease of the cursed" had taken him.

There were whisperings among the neighbours in their communal courtyard in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, that a witch had placed the Saabas in the grip of dark and murderous magic. Traditional beliefs in this corner of west Africa dictated that when a normally healthy person fell ill, it was the work of a "hex" cast by a local "sorceress" – an old widow without children.

It was only in August last year, when the sickness robbed Mariam of her three children (the oldest aged six, the youngest just 18 months), that those around her accepted the illness for what it was – Aids.

Standing outside the community centre for children orphaned by Aids, where she is now a care worker, the 34-year-old said: "My family was killed by Aids – not a vengeful hag. Ignorance and fear are the main enemies we face in this country when we try to deal with this disease.

"My husband refused to take a test ... He didn't want to come out of the shadows. He was afraid of discrimination. What people were saying about a disease of the cursed was a convenient excuse for him. After he had gone, my first two children died slowly. The baby died quickly."

Speaking slowly in heavily-accented French, she pointed to some of the orphans around her: "Now I want people to understand what it is we are facing: A whole country full of children like these."

In Burkina Faso, the world's third poorest country, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that 9.8 per cent of the population, about 700,000 adults and 200,000 children, are now HIV positive. The disease has killed more than 250,000 children and adults. If its spread goes unchecked, it will create one million orphans, most of them HIV positive, by 2020.

The 12th International Conference on Aids and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, held in Ouagadougou last month, was told that countries such as Burkina Faso faced a human and economic blight because of Aids.

The fear is that while Africa's larger countries, such as South Africa, Uganda and Botswana, forge ahead in their battles against epidemics which have reached up to 30 per cent of their populations, smaller nations could be forgotten.

The UNDP estimates that growth rates vital to the development of Burkina will fall by as much as 27.5 per cent over the next 15 years. Almost one in two people lives below the poverty line, and the highest level of infection is among girls aged 13 to 24.

Mariam, who is HIV positive, has been working at the Vie Positive orphanage on a red dust road in eastern Ouagadougou for a year, helping to counsel 100 children. Most do not know they are HIV positive.

Mariam receives, by Burkinan standards, a comfortable civil servant's salary equivalent to about £70 per month. But the cost of the anti-retroviral drugs she needs is £85 per month.

Despite an agreement by pharmaceutical companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Merck Sharp & Dohme, and Bristol-Myers Squibb, to produce generic versions of the drugs at an 80 per cent discount, the cost is still five times that of an average family's monthly income, according to the UNDP.

Mariam said: "I face a choice, either I have the drugs or I eat. It is no choice really – I will carry on working until I can but I know one day I will have to stop because I will be weak and cannot afford the medicines."