Category: Emma Wallis’s Blog
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Two London doctors, Will Wynter Bee and James Denny, underwent one of the hardest physical challenges to raise money for Saving Lives. Through generous sponsorship they have raised over £1500 for Swaziland’s Saving Lives. This was not without its challenges. They swam 3.8km followed by a 180km cycle and finishing off with a marathon in…
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It had been 11 days since I first met Sibelo and I had been busy doing various things around the hospital, as well as visiting another completely different private hospital in a sugar plantation. In the meantime this gentleman had been to see the HIV specialist who had done a brief medical assessment of him…
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Another of our correspondents in Swaziland, Charlie, writes about an unusual case he recently encountered on the same day Emma was delivering her condom promotion classes … During a day spent in the rural community, during a teaching session on condom promotion. I was approached by an elderly lady and asked if she could speak…
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No food: During our teaching at the school, we made sure that questions were invited and that everyone should be free to ask anything. Problems that were commonly addressed included, “What should I do if I don’t have any food to take my ARVs with? How should I get food?” If you take the ARVs…
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The long walk to the village with Maké Today I organised along with Make and a primary school teacher to teach 30-40 people who live in a village about HIV. I really had no idea what to expect about the lesson, however I prepared an introduction and 2 stories in order to get across our…
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Delay to testing and treatment; stigma, beliefs and fears Today I was speaking to a man who had been diagnosed with HIV for 9 years. Unfortunately he has suspected Tuberculosis, an extremely common infection in Swaziland, particularly amongst the HIV population. We got to talking about how he became infected with HIV; he told me…
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International Saving Lives volunteer Emma Wilson will be blogging over the next few weeks from the Swaziland. Yesterday she wrote about the role of the community health promoter, and about a woman called Máke in particular. Today she writes about her experience of going out in the country with her … — In this picture…
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In the USA today, the Center for Disease Control has released important figures about the spread of HIV. The headline figure, as an excellent piece in the New York Times has it, is that new HIV infections have remained steady: Despite years of great progress in treating AIDS, the number of new infections with the virus…
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“Máke” in si swati means “mother”; it is a very appropriate name for a lady I met who works as a rural health promoter. Rural health promoters are people that live in the community who try to improve the access to medical care by either making people who are sick go to hospital or, if…
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Emma Wallis, a final year medical student at the University of Leeds, has volunteered for Saving Lives: she’s arriving in Swaziland this week to learn more about the fight against HIV in a country particularly hard hit by the infection, and will be blogging her experiences for us here on the site. She’ll be working…