Advanced Workshop for AIDS Clinical Care (AWACC) is an annual conference held in Durban, South Africa.   This year our HIV animation series in English and Zulu was announced as a hand out for the doctors and nurses who attended the conference. Many serving in rural South African clinics and hospitals were in attendance, and all our videos were snatched up. We have about 20,000 YouTube hits on the three animations to date.

Tuberculosis was a big highlight of the conference, as well as obesity and arterial disease among people living with HIV and AIDS.  We are all over the obesity and arterial disease problem with our health builders, but we need to step up and do more about tuberculosis.  The major way of transmission of the really bad forms called MDR (multi-drug resistant) and XDR (extremely drug resistant) is from sitting in waiting rooms at clinics or riding in crowded taxis called combis where somebody with tuberculosis is coughing.  It only takes breathing in about 10 aerosolized TB bugs to get the disease.

Dr. Jacques Grosset from France said in the early 1960s he predicted the current problems with resistant forms of tuberculosis.  Six years ago 52/53 patients died in one Tugela Ferry hospital north of us from XXDR-TB.  At the time, there had only been 347 cases in the world.  Dr. Grosset recommended that the focus on TB treatment be getting the people with simple TB identified and treated before they got the advanced and drug resistant forms.  Testing and treating for HIV is also vital as reduced immune function predisposes to TB.      

One in four young adults in South Africa is infected with HIV, and of these, up to two thirds may also be infected with TB.  People with HIV also have a much higher risk of TB infection rapidly turning into active disease.  A person infected with TB but without HIV infection usually has only a 5 – 10% risk of developing active TB throughout his lifetime.  However, if a person is also HIV-infected, the risk of developing active TB after TB infection increases to 5 – 10% per year. (http://www.mrc.ac.za/public/fact7.htm)

Here is a summary of a series of emails we received from a health educator who is using our video in the Tugela Ferry area:

“I am working on a treatment literacy program for HIV/TB co-infected patients that are being cared for in a hospital step down unit here. I have not managed to master isiZulu and most of the patients here do not understand English and many are illiterate so audio-visuals seem like a promising way to go…

I want to send you an update to tell you that we have been using the (HIV) DVD's constantly.  I shared one copy with a health clinic and the other we have shown to at least 50 high school students that we have been working with as well as another random 2 dozen or more showings...

A Tribal Council watched the video during a 3 day training another colleague and I did this week...

The weekend of November 23, I will be gathering with ~25 other colleagues in KwaZulu-Natal.  We like to share what is working in our communities.  I will show these DVDs...

Will other topics be done like this?”

We would like to tackle tuberculosis as an animation project as it is vital that people are widely educated on TB.

On this Thanksgiving, we are especially grateful for your support that enables us to equip many others in the fight against these two diseases – one ancient and one modern - which are teamed up in a deadly combo.