Extra-Time

MSF footbal event in Geneva. Photo: MSF

Around 50 Médecins Sans Frontières members based in Geneva got together on the evening of July 1st, to play in a friendly football tournament, to kick some HIV balls and to enjoy a picnic dinner with families and friends on the grass by the Lake. The white team, led by advisors to the Swaziland and Mozambique missions, was highly motivated and scored numerous goals !

The all-star Brazil football squad entered the 2010 FIFA World Cup as early favourites to make it to the finals and hope to lift the golden trophy. And similarly in Médecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) upcoming HALFTIME! tournament in South Africa sees a strong Zimbabwean team as one of the top contenders to take home the title five days before the kick-off here in Newtown Park, Johannesburg on 2 July. 

ARV Swallows. Photo: Joanna Stavropoulou/MSF

The ARV Swallows, an all female football team from the Epworth township near Harare are coming to South Africa with an impressive track record – they have won the HIV women’s league championship in their home country and are motivated to take victory in on Friday as well. HALFTIME! and the tournament featuring people living with HIV and MSF staff from four countries in Southern Africa in an effort to raise awareness on the continued battle for funding to fight HIV/AIDS. The tournament sees six football teams playing matches to raise the alarm about the ongoing HIV/AIDS emergency.

The ARV Swallows formed in 2009 when a group of HIV positive women, all seeking treatment at an MSF clinic in Epworth decided to form a football team to take on two stereotypes: that HIV is a death sentence and that women cannot play football.

This year, the ARV Swallows find themselves taking on a different challenge – to spread the message that the HIV/AIDS emergency is not over and HIV treatment funding needs to be secured. In order to do this they have had to make some changes. They have reduced the team from 11 to five players and they have had to draft a man into their ranks, their coach Jonas Kapakasa, as an additional member to meet the mixed gender requirement for teams to participate in HALFTIME!

And China is also going to play in this Zimbabwean team, too… A multinational team? No, no, no… “China” is the nickname of Janet Mpalume, the ARV Swallows’ star striker!

It has been Janet’s dream to play football abroad and this week her dream comes true when she and her team mates take to the HALFTIME! pitch in Johannesburg along with five other teams.

“We are training as hard as we can and I believe that we are going to beat the other teams. Playing soccer makes me feel like I am alive. It allows me to feel like I am valued and that I am seen amongst other people,” Janet says.

They clearly have the guts and determination, but will they be able to fend off challenges by countrymen the OI Bombers, Swaziland’s HIV Conquerors, Mozambique’s lightning fast Mambinhas, and the South African hopefuls, Siyaphila and Fluconazole Pirates?

We’ll have to wait and see if the ARV Swallows team will be victorious again. Visit the tournament in Johannesburg on Friday, or if you can’t make it find out more about the teams and the tournament here www.msf-halftime.info.

For more information on ARV Swallows visit www.thepositiveladiessoccerclub.com

- PK Lee, MSF Communications Officer

The Thwala family gathers around the small radio set to listen to the commentary of the 2010 FIFA World Cup tournament match kicks off. The excitement in the little four-roomed house is so huge, neighbours walking past can almost feel it.

Jeremiah Thwala reminiscing the past, before he got sick with HIV related infections, including MDR TB. Photo: Lesang Makhubu

Like millions of soccer lovers around the world, the Thwalas have been looking forward to this momentous occasion for some time now. For them, the World Cup event is all the more exciting because, for the first time in history, the biggest sporting event in the world is taking place in Africa, in neighbouring South Africa.

The Thwala family lives in Jerusalem, a small rural community in the Shiselweni Region, in the southern part of Swaziland.

The small Kingdom of Swaziland is sandwiched between South Africa and Mozambique. It is the country with the world’s highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS, where every one in four people are living with HIV. 

For 48 year-old Jeremiah Thwala, the head of the household, the moment is a welcome reprieve from the woes of an illness that has ravaged him for the past two years or so. He cannot help thinking how close he came to missing this historical event when he nearly died due to the killer dual infection of HIV and tuberculosis (TB).

As he looks around at the excited faces of his three children, two teenage boys and a girl, he can only appreciate the second chance he has been given at life.

Antiretroviral (ARV) drugs and treatment for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) have allowed him to get his life back. Jeremiah is one of thousands of Swazis who are co-infected with HIV and TB (or as in his case, MDR TB which is a much harder to treat and deadlier form of TB).

“ARVs and TB drugs have given me a second chance at life, but it is a pity that my wife did not get this second chance,” he laments.

Jeremiah’s wife, Patricia Masuku, died in 2005 before a diagnosis could be made because the family never sought medical help. They believed that her sickness was a result of witchcraft practices by neighbours in the community.

While many people in Swaziland have died needlessly because of such misguided beliefs, many more are alive today because they now have access to free life-saving HIV and TB treatment at public health facilities.

Access to antiretrovirals and MDR TB drugs have allowed Jeremiah to recover well enough to perform various tasks for himself, including doing his own laundry, while his children are away at school. Photo: Lesang Makhubu

Jeremiah, who is currently unemployed due to his health condition which is slowly improving thanks to treatment, says he has every reason to be forever grateful that he received access to ARVs and TB drugs. He now has the chance to raise his children and see his first grandchild.

For the moment, he can enjoy the match between France and Mexico. A simple pleasure many would take for granted, but one that holds a moment of magic for Jeremiah and his children.

- Lungile Dlamini, MSF Information, Education and Communications Officer, Mbabane, Swaziland.

In January this year I travelled to Cameroon to make a health promotion film that featured Sylvestre, a patient who motivate others to seek treatment. Sylvestre is a soft spoken man in his 30’s and at the hospital in Akonolinga town in East-Cameroon he is the master of the television set – especially when there is football to be watched. During my visit the national football team was competing in the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations in Angola.

Outside the hospital ward built by Médecins Sans Frontierès / Doctors Without Borders (MSF), around 50 patients suffering from the rare skin disease Buruli Ulcus were huddled around the Sylvestre’s TV to watch Cameroon’s compete in the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations in Angola. There was an almighty cry and shout at every shot at goal, but their pride and hope was not rewarded. Cameroon was defeated.

Patients in the MSF-ward of the hospital in Akonolinga, Cameroon, watch their national football team competing in the Africa Cup, January 2010. Photo by MSF.

Sylvestre is an ardent football fan and he loves to talk about his hero, Roger Milla, once voted Africa’s best player. It seems that for Cameroon, every decade holds a challenge and a possible victory. In the 1990 FIFA World Cup, the national team surprised the football world when then 38-year old Milla scored four brilliant goals, securing Cameroon’s place in the Quarter Finals. Never before has an African team performed better in the World Cup tournament. Before Milla’s and the Cameroonian team’s performance on that year, naysayers wrote off African teams as serious contenders. “No discipline,” said some. “No endurance,” said others.

Ten years later Cameroon stood facing a far larger challenge, a challenge against all odds. And here MSF was able to play its part. In 2000, MSF set up its first HIV treatment programme in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde and delivered proof: those first patients leapt at the chance of a new lease on life and stuck to their treatment with determination.

Naysayers again said Africa had no money and no medical facilities, and they thought that African patients lacked discipline to adhere to treatment.

Now in 2010, the Les Lions Indomptables (The Indomitable Lions) and people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHWA) in Cameroon are facing new challenges again both on the field and in the treatment clinics.

In football Les Lions Indomptables are qualified to be around the best of the world. But in the match against HIV/AIDS, Cameroon still has a long way to go. At present only half of the people in need of ARVs receive treatment. So to use a football metaphor: For 11 people on the field battling HIV with ARVs, there are another 11 on the bench, waiting desperately for treatment.

But one out of 11 players develops resistance to ARV drugs. Patients face the old barriers of second-line HIV treatments being too expensive and complex to administer. Again, MSF together with Ministry of Health set out to deliver not only treatment, but proof that it is possible yet again.

As Cameroonian football fans prepare to cheer on their team to victory, scores of patients are sure to huddle around Sylvestre’s TV again in Akonolinga. And as Cameroonian Lions find the back of the collective roar will go up signaling the pride and hope of a nation for their team and for PLWHA.

Marcell Nimfuehr is MSF Communications Advisor for Cameroon

MSF Staff in Joburg

The World Cup spirit is felt everywhere here in Khayelitsha! Since I arrived a year ago from Brazil to work for MSF in this impoverished township near Cape Town, I have never seen the patients so proud as today! They come to the clinic wearing their yellow and green Bafana Bafana jerseys, so excited about their national team playing in the opening match today in Africa’s first ever and their very own World Cup. Football is the most popular sport in Khayelitsha and you can see children kicking a ball on almost every street corner! This sport is so central to these communities.

I often feel at home here, given the similarities between my country, Brazil, and South Africa. On Wednesday, we had a huge “vuvuzela break” during the lunch time. You couldn’t hear anything else but the blaring sound of vuvuzelas! Everybody keeps on asking: “Can you feel it?!” The excitement and patriotism of our patients really resonate through the sound of vuvuzelas!

In Africa alone, 500,000 children died because of AIDS in 2005. And today, we know that millions of African babies won’t live to see their second birthday. It’s a sad reality that none of us should forget. Nonetheless, the great sport event that kicks off today is a good opportunity to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS not only in South Africa but over the world as well!

Even if Bafana Bafana do not win the title, they will have proved how much energy people in this country can dedicate to a cause. I believe South Africa is making all possible efforts to win the battle against HIV/AIDS epidemic and this is really impressive. In Khayelitsha alone, we have 14,500 patients on antiretroviral treatment for HIV/Aids and hope to finish the year with 20,000 patients. The success of this township in its fight against the disease has been made possible thanks to the concerted effort of South Africans but also because of additional funds received from outside sources such as Global Fund. The concern now is that if funding dries up, these successes will be reversed and maybe the situation will worsen again.
South Africans have a burning passion inside them that can produce incredible changes. The World Cup has just highlighted this for me. I wish them all the best in keeping that passion alive through this long walk they have embarked on.

Yours truly,
Dr. Carolina Malavazzi Galvão

P.S. I am supporting Brazil and South Africa and will be very happy if one of my favourites win the trophy this year.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has been running an HIV/AIDS programme in Khayelitsha in partnership with City of Cape Town health authorities since 2000.

“Truly speaking, the little I know about morality, I learnt it on football pitches.”   French philosopher and Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, Albert Camus.

In four days time the sound of a whistle and crisp thud of a boot on a football will herald a month when the world’s eyes are fixed on South Africa.

In the coming weeks, billions of people will watch the spectacle of the much anticipated FIFA World Cup 2010, held for the first time in its 80 year existence in Africa.

A group of HIV-positive women in Epworth, one of Zimbabwe's poorest townships, decided to form a soccer team and to compete in tournaments. Photo: Joanna Stavropoulou/MSF

For the most part the global television audience of over 300million will be focussed on what happens on the 10 football pitches around South Africa and celebrating the winning teams.

But Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders and other organisations want the world to see the full picture. While the unifying power of football is celebrated 1,4million people are still dying needlessly of HIV/AIDS each year in sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of these deaths could be averted by increased access to antiretroviral therapies (ART) and a right to treatment.

MSF wants to remind the world that the HIV/AIDS crisis is not over.

MSF teams are present in several countries of the Southern African region and provide assistance, treatment and care in numerous communities affected by HIV/AIDS and its deadly associate-disease, tuberculosis.

During the following six weeks, this blog will give people living with HIV/AIDS, MSF doctors, nurses, lay counsellors and football supporters the opportunity speak out about this reality while the world’s media and competing nations focus on the football matches.

The world has witnessed the remarkable achievements in the fighting HIV/AIDS during the last 10 years which saved the lives of millions in developing countries through the scale-up of treatment and care for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Over 4 million people in developing countries now have access to life-saving ART – an incredible medical feat. However all these efforts are not enough as 9,5million more people in the developing world who are need of ART but are still on the waiting list for access.

But a treatment funding deficit will condemn these millions of people living with HIV/AIDS to death.

These millions of people are almost all entirely dependent on donor countries and institutions like the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, in order to survive. But there has been a perceptible shift among donor countries in the G8 away from promises they made to keep up with long-term commitments to fund ART for people living with HIV/AIDS.

So, what we are seeing now is t that the much anticipated happy and normal full time that life prolonging funded ART would have brought is now under threat.

All members of the team called ARV Swallows are MSF patients and receive antiretroviral treatment at the Epworth Polyclinic, where MSF treats almost 7.000 HIV-positive patients a year. Photo: Joanna Stavropoulou/MSF

The effect of a donor retreat on funding the HIVAIDS fight is like having the referee blow his whistle to stop the World Cup final match halfway through. It would cause an outrage,with nations and people up in arms over the match being stopped at halftime. But the sad fact is when donors and the rich nations start turning off the HIV funding tap off – an action that will result in the premature and preventable death of millions of people needing immediate treatment for HIV/AIDS – it happens with little or no reaction or outrage. This is not acceptable.

We call on the world to protest against lives being lost because poor nations cannot afford treatment. .

By reading this blog and contributing your views, you can take a stand in support of universal access to treatment and care for ALL people living with HIV/AIDS. By doing this you’ll stand in support of giving people in developing countries living with HIV/AIDS a sporting chance. The world needs to demand Extra-Time in the deciding match where scoring for treatment, saving the lives of people and beating HIV/AIDS is the ultimate goal. Let the provision of funded and scaled-up antiretroviral treatment and saving millions of lives be the winner, then only will the world triumph.