Thembelihle
Last week was a hard one. We lost my colleague and officemate, Thembelihle. Thembi was only 28 years old and has two lovely daughters ages 9 and 2. Thembi was loud and energetic, she and I shared an office for 6 months and it seemed that nearly every person on the floor popped by regularly to chat, gossip, and be on the receiving end of her big smile. Quite suddenly last February she got ill and was out of the office for 3 weeks. When she returned she was weak and frail, she seemed fragile and scared. But one day last month I heard her loud laugh in the hallway and thought to myself, our girl is bouncing back. Shortly after that I heard that she was once again in the hospital.
Her diagnosis was TB and although it hasn’t been directly confirmed with me, she likely was co-infected with HIV. She died last Sunday in Joburg General Hospital. The health statistics in South Africa are shocking and inescapable—this country has the largest population in the world of HIV-positive and TB infected people. The co-infection rate of these two diseases is extremely high, according to many estimates 70% of TB infected people are also HIV positive. I cite these statistics all the time, and I worked closely with TB patents last year. But the epidemic(s) still somehow felt far from my reality. Thembi’s death has changed that. As my boss said last week, “We talk of TB as a national tragedy, but here it is as a personal tragedy.” The statistics now have a face, a smile, a laugh, and a name.
Apart from the loss of Thembi herself, what makes this so upsetting is that things didn’t have to end up this way. TB and HIV are both preventable. TB is curable. HIV is treatable, and people with access to medications and good care can live healthy lives for decades. The South African government has promised access to ARVs and TB medication for anyone who needs them, yet South Africans are still dying in droves. I don’t know what kind of treatment Thembi received, she had some access to good doctors thanks to her position at the Wits Medical School, but I doubt she got the personal care she needed. For someone like her without the means to visit private doctors and get care in private hospitals the likelihood of getting truly good care is quite slim. I know with certainty that if I had come down with the same ailments as Thembi that my fate would have been very different from hers. Thanks to medical insurance and disposable income I would have had access to the country’s finest health care and best private hospitals, I would have gotten the care that I needed. But if you’re poor you do not have that luxury. And what luxury is that? It seems to me that it’s the luxury of being cared for as if your life is not expendable. No one’s life is expendable.
South Africa is a harsh place for so many millions of people. Inequity is a part of daily life here, but this tragedy is my most heartbreaking example so far of South Africa’s (in)famous disparities. I really didn’t think that one of my coworkers would end up as a public health statistic—another young person needlessly lost to disease and inadequate care—I am very sad to say that I was mistaken.
We are going to miss you, Thembi.
Our department, taken October 2010. Thembi is in the front row in the yellow shirt.
