Poverty killing Swazis like flies

POVERTY is responsible for the many deaths in this country. People die from many preventable diseases and simply because they cannot afford to access healthcare where available.
Gogo Zwane of Mkhiweni knew she would finally die at RFM because in the eight days she spent there she was neither given a drip nor was she attended to by a nurse or doctor.
This was because she was so emaciated when she arrived at the hospital that she may have been a nuisance to the healthcare givers. Prior to being admitted to the hospital, she had been battling to get something under her nose and given her advanced age she had no one by her side at the time she fell ill, more especially because she had lost both sight and speech.
But probably her case is somehow dramatic. Each time we think of seeing a doctor, it marks the beginning of a nightmare that will last the few remaining days. Most Swazis who die is because they are so poor they cannot get money to see a doctor or receive their rations of cocktails of drugs provided free by government.
surgery
If you may involve yourself in a nasty accident and taken to either RFM or Mbabane Government Hospital, it is almost given that death is the result unless you have a medical card with sufficient money to be rushed to South Africa for advanced surgery and other treatment.
Otherwise the over 80% of our people cannot afford this instead they while away time at these so called health institutions, swallowing endless doses of Paracetamol or Panado.
The other form of treatment comes around the lunch hour brought about by vagabonds who peddle their idleness by claiming to provide cure through  prayer instead of medical attention.
I have seen a few disfigured people in town and most of them are in gainful employment. They all survived because of medical aid. I do not have the number of those who died for the lack of this facility but a visit to the cemeteries and the country’s graves in the countryside can give an idea.
Nowadays seldom to people go to hospital in serious conditions and return home alive. An attitude has also been developed by all that once in hospital, it is just a stop-over before the cemetery.
At the hospital there’re inadequate or inappropriate drugs because it would seem a waste to spend those drugs on people who have no money.
The government will always be telling the populace about inadequate budget, shortage of doctors and other experts, lack of hospital equipment and so on until the next election.
lullaby
Swaziland is unable to provide the much needed dividend on health to each citizen, at least on average. Even the much talked about basic health services is just a lullaby for those on the sickbed moments before the definite final sleep.
Early this month the Ministry of Health and Médecins Sans Frontières  brought together health experts in search of  practical solutions.
At this meeting Health Minister Benedict Xaba admitted before the delegates that although the country provided free TB medicines, other costs, such as hospital fees and transport, made it difficult for many people to access health services.
This admission was to have been coupled with solutions coming from realisation of same. We talk of free medicines that are not accessible! One of the electioneering slogans at the next election will most likely be ‘we provided free medicines but people were lazy to collect them’.
A WHO delegate, who is also a TB specialist said: “There are several issues that Swaziland needs to face. Access to care is particularly important … so people who show signs of symptoms can be checked immediately.
Free consultation is absolutely imperative – we must think of free care from diagnosis to clinical cure.”
At the background of this we know that one in four adults is infected with HIV; by the end of 2007, there were about 170 000 living with HIV. It is estimated that every year 13 000 people develop TB.
Medical attention has become very expensive, what with the faltering global economy and the uncontrollable corruption in Swaziland.
At St. Theresa’s in Manzini we used to get the right medicine and even free eye glasses after free diagnosis. But things changed over night because of the economy.
In the government institutions, for a long time, there has been nothing to obtain there except the ‘sick sheet’ [doctor’s report] to take to the employer for a few days away from the workplace.
famine
UNFP says poverty is driven by the persistent drought that has caused famine in many rural communities, especially in the eastern Lowveld and Lubombo plateau. 
In addition there are, the loss of income earnings through retrenchments and general unemployment that has sky rocketed, thus contributing to the lack of access to productive resources by the poor. 
Lastly, the HIV and AIDS scourge has intensified poverty due to the loss of earnings from breadwinners in families.
In Swaziland, the average minister drives a 2009 Toyota Fortuner 4.0 V6 4x4 Epic Auto Mileage which costs about E500 000.  At E100 for treatment and medication at St. Theresa’s and for the average illness, 5 000 patients can benefit instead of the sleek wheels for the one person.
We can do more, having clearly understood where our misfortunes come from, in addressing the health problems of Swaziland. People are just poor and for that reason they die, where do we or are we going wrong. The solution lies here.

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