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COTE D IVOIRE: Private
AIDS clinic brings hope to Abidjan slum
(Reposted from sources cited below)
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ABIDJAN, 23 Sep 2004 (IRIN) - For Swiss-born Lotti Latrous, founder of
a private AIDS clinic in the slums of Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire’s
economic hub, the cup is never half empty, but always half full.
In other words, she is an optimist.
“Of 640 people hospitalized over the past two years, half of them
died,” she said, leafing through a large notebook. She sighed, looked
away and managed a smile. “But the good news is that the others all
went home.”
Few health clinics in Abidjan are as efficiently run as ‘Centre
l’Espoir’ - which means ‘The Hope Centre’ in French.
It is built smack in the middle of one of the poorest neighborhoods of
Abidjan - Adjouffou, an area of sandy flat land near the city's
airport.
From all over Abidjan, people living with AIDS find their way to this
clinic. They often arriver there after having spent all their money on
medical bills to consult doctors who are afraid to tell them what they
really suffer from.
Latrous was a housewife and a mother of three when she befriended an
Ivorian doctor who invited her to assist him while he gave free
consultations in Adjouffou. Affordable basic health care was
non-existent in Abidjan at the time.
Before long, she began using her contacts within the expatriate
community to raise funds for a small clinic.
She opened a dispensary in 1999. Three-and-a-half years later, a
second building was inaugurated, focusing on adults in an advanced
stage of AIDS.
Today, Latrous, who is in her early fifties, not only runs the clinic.
She also lives here, in a tiny room next to ‘her’ patients. Pictures
of her children, who live with her husband in Egypt, decorate the wall
alongside her bed.
The dispensary consists of roofed-over containers housing a
laboratory, an office, two sick rooms for day patients and a pharmacy.
The AIDS clinic is housed in a separate low brick building with a
large open-air courtyard where some patients sit chatting around a
table, while others snooze comfortably on sofas.
A condom costs the same as a daily meal
Latrous believes that the HIV prevalence rate in this poor
neighbourhood is much higher than the official average of 9.5 percent
for Cote d'Ivoire as a whole.
This country, which has been partitioned by civil war for the past two
years, has the highest rate of HIV prevalence in West Africa.
And although it remains the most prosperous country in the region,
many of its inhabitants are still very poor.
“A lot of people can only afford one meal a day, which costs about as
much as one condom,” Latrous said.
“In the dispensary, we started receiving a lot of people with possible
symptoms of AIDS, such as diarrhea, tuberculosis, and weight loss. So
I decided to offer free blood tests. And what I saw was really, really
frightening : of the generation born between 1960 and 1975, seven out
of ten people tested positive.”
The dispensary offers basic medical care to everyone at only 300 CFA
francs (55 US cents) per visit. In five years it has carried out over
100,000 consultations.
Latrous’ indefatigability, her frank manner of speaking about HIV/AIDS
and her caring, almost motherly approach to people suffering from the
virus have earned her centre its reputation as a uniquely successful
AIDS clinic.
Latrous believes that the main problem with AIDS in Cote d'Ivoire,
apart from poverty, is taking the test.
“Public hospitals do not offer to test for HIV, even if a patient has
all the symptoms of AIDS. Doctors are afraid to tell the truth. And
they make more money this way. I once had a boy here with a letter
from a public hospital saying: ‘Please tell this young man he has
AIDS’. This is typical.”
Latrous said most Ivorians do not know that anti-retroviral (ARV)
drugs, which are nowadays available at the government subsidised price
of 5,000 CFA (US$9) per month, can prolong their lifespan by years, if
not decades.
Bringing the news to light despite discrimination
So how does Latrous break the news?
“The day they find out they are seropositive is perhaps the best in
their life. That is what I tell them. Because you can not fight an
illness you don’t know. It’s like a ghost, invisible. You can only
start fighting it the day you know what it is. A lot of these poor
people have spent a fortune on hospital bills. Now they can finally
try to get better.”
Centre l’Espoir runs entirely on gifts and donations. The nurses and
doctors are Ivorian. Two women of the Abidjan expatriate community
help out as volunteers. Several members of staff are HIV-positive,
including a watchman, the handyman and the female cooks.
Within the enclosure of the clinic, the subject of HIV/AIDS is
discussed more or less openly among staff members. But withinin the
surrounding neighbourhood, the topic remains taboo, despite Latrous’
near celebrity status.
“I have the hardest time finding a garbage collector, because nobody
will touch our garbage,” Latrous said. “On the other hand, we can hang
our sheets out to dry anywhere we want, because nobody will steal them
-- not even here.”
Most of the patients in Centre l’Espoir are women. Latrous is critical
of African men -- she thinks they have no sense of responsibility.
“African women think about their children first, that is why they will
take the test : they do not want their children to be orphans. But the
men - they are always afraid. They all have girlfriends on the side
and they do not want to know the truth. They would rather ‘share’
their sickness with their wife.”
Thanks to the Centre l'Espoir, many Ivorian women will admit openly
that they are living with HIV/AIDS.
Earlier this year, Awa was brought in helpless, dazed and skinny as a
stick. Today, she is a healthy young woman with sparkling eyes who
says she owes her life to Lotti Latrous.
“Madame Lotti told me that I was seropositive, but it did not mean I’d
have to die. I take ARV’s now and I feel fine. There is nothing wrong
with me, and this is what I try to tell other people : it’s possible
to live with HIV/AIDS.”
Awa shares a small apartment with her mother and her six-year-old son.
“Of course, I take my precautions. I have my own toothbrush and razor
blade and I make sure that no one else uses them. You see, in this
neighborhood, people even share basic things like a toothbrush.” |
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