Stories

Debbie
I miss working in a TB clinic with the patients face to face. I love the empowering people through my work, I love the atmosphere. What I don’t like so much is being in charge especially when you have to let someone go – I don’t like that. I need to do my work but I don’t like how it makes me feel when I have to let someone go but why would I keep you on if the community doesn’t accept you.

My advice to people would be – do not wait until you are half dead before you go to the clinic because this is what happens. we get people who are so sick when they come to the clinic for VCT – they have TB and they have thrush. When you come in for B we can cure you but we have had people come in with a CD4 count of two. The person probably knows they are HIV positive but refuses to accept it.

I was a factory worker. I heard that they were starting a project on TB in Cape Town. I went for an interview and I was accepted. It was a job for three years and but I carried on working for 16 years. We were called Health Advisors – you had to know everything about health. You had to talk to people about TB, family planning and many other things.

TB care is about what we can do fro the patient to make their plight easier. Community based treatment is successful because people stick to their treatment. It stops patients from sitting for hours on end at clinics to get their treatment. We used to give out food parcels but people abused it – they would sell them to buy wine. It was hard to police to we stopped it.

Nancy
I like my job because you help people and people need help. I give tablets to all TB patients. We also do go and visit anyone who is too sick to come or those that cant come in to give them their medication. I go and visit a lady who is in a wheelchair and give her medication.

Elizabeth Nomgqibelo Sijila – Community Health Worker – Langa Clinic
It’s a big challenge towards my career. I learn some new skills, how to cope with my clients. Before with Tb it was easier – with HIV it is different thing because I must educate first, I must counsel them. I must make sure they understand what they are living with and I must visit them. Its very difficult with HIV to help them to disclose to their families.

The challenges we are met with is that some of them are afraid to give us the right address. They have fear to disclose to their families and friends. With this course we are doing its really helping us a lot. I’m looking forward to the challenge – I can go t the Eastern Cape with this education I have. Western Cape is doing well but we need to do our best to let people in the Eastern Cape know what HI V/AIDS is.

Zoleka Nkomiyaphi – Langa Clinic
We learn a lot. If I am HIV – the whole family is affected. I have learnt that if I visit a HIV patient in bed and there are no rubber gloves, I learnt that I can use a condom or a plastic bag.

Ncumisa – Brooklyn Chest Hospital
There are a lot of challenges in my work, when I go home I cant even sleep. A big challenge it’s when the mother doesn’t want the child. We discharge the child, the mother is now staying with another man and now he doesn’t want a child that is not his. The worst is the children who are not visited. They stay in the hospital for a long time but they are not visited there. It touches me because when they see other children visited then they have questions – where is my mom? They ask me to phone their mom because she is not visiting . Then there are those children who have lost their parents. There was a little boy here – he was grieving, his mom died, he wasn’t talking, not really eating, just lying on the bed. After three days I said let me give time to this boy. I talked to him, only after that day he opened up to me. Now he is happy, he talked and laughed for the first time when I was playing with him. Every day you get challenged in this work.

I love being with children, I love to see them stimulated, I love to see them happy, I love to see them being children.

I am an educare teacher. My job is to stimulate the children, they learn through playing. The first time I came here, they just left the children in the cots the whole day. Now when the children see me they know we are out of the cots and they start jumping with joy.

You really need to observe in this work. The children know how I greet them. I can’t pick them all up so we touch with hands. The ones who are not visited they need close contact, they need to be on your chest.

When I have my baby I will be at home but my mind and heart will be here. Last time I had a child I only took two weeks off. The children really need me to be here. It’s more than a job for me.

Nomhle Koliwe, 39
I really like this work. I want to learn more. I had a sister who was sick, she died in February. We didn’t know what was wrong with her, we didn’t know the symptoms of TB and HIV. She was just coughing, we didn’t take care of that cough. I want to learn more so that I can tell other people. No one must die. I am looking after my sister’s little girl who is positive because she was breastfed. I want to learn so I can help the little one.

I want to teach the people that TB is curable. They also don’t understand why you can get TB again when you treat it and it is curable. They don’t understand why they get MDR or XDR TB. I like to talk to people. TB must finish now – it will if everyone finishes their treatment.

Even in the taxis I like to talk to people. Sometimes you hear them talking wrong things like – don’t go to the clinic because TB is not curable and you will get more TB there. I go straight to them and tell them the truth and what they must do.

I have been doing this since April this year. We can ask Rita anything, she is very friendly.

I am a good example. I had TB and I am fine now. I just had a chest pain and I run to the clinic. I was not sick, sick, I didn’t go to the bed. But I am proof that TB can be cured.

Stella – District co-ordinator – supervises treatment supporters who do home visits
I love the fact that I can motivate the teachers at the hospital that the work they are doing is so important. To be able to tell the parents that your child can now read and write. To do this we keep detailed reports on all the children.

A challenge in my work is when some of the people in a household are not interested in being tested. Its difficult to motivate people to be tested – I tell them its nice to know are negative. Its important not to infect the children as they end up being the sickest in the family and then need to be in hospital. Its frustrating people don’t go for tests even after you have visited after them for the second and third time. It’s so important to look after the children.

In the hospital the challenge is to get the mothers to visit at least once a week so the child doesn’t feel abandoned.