Aids no longer death sentence
2007-06-17 16:00
Special Report
The SA Medical Association has called on people to have HIV tests to mark World Aids Day.
Johannesburg - Abandoned in a bar as a baby and given just weeks to live by doctors seven years later, Tommy Jarvis is living proof Aids is no longer an automatic death sentence for youngsters in South Africa.
Tommy, now a strapping 13-year-old who spends his spare time riding his bike and practicing karate, makes light of the day that medics gave up on him.
"They said I would be dead in three weeks but look at me now," says the still slightly incredulous teenager who now wants to serve as an inspiration to youngsters with a similar story.
Thea Jarvis, who adopted Tommy after his birth mother abandoned him in a township drinking hole when he was one-year-old, recalls how the family became aware of his HIV-positive status when he later contracted pneumonia.
Although Aids-fighting anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) had come on the market, they were prohibitively expensive and she was faced with a dreadful dilemma.
"I had four children who were HIV positive and couldn't afford to put them all on ARVs," Jarvis said at her sprawling family home on the outskirts of Johannesburg where she and an army of assistants care for more than 70 abandoned babies.
It was not until Tommy, then aged eight, was "on his deathbed" that she managed to scrape together the money to put him and the other children on a course of ARVs, which have given them all a new lease of life.
The plight of vulnerable children will be addressed
Tommy was one of the stars of the show at the recent national Aids conference in Durban where he addressed delegates about his life and how he hopes to help others replicate his stirring story.
"I want to look after albino babies that can't be looked after by their mums and dads," he said alongside his visibly proud adoptive mother.
The arrival on the market of more affordable ARVs has helped reduce the mortality rate among HIV-positive youngsters as has a shift in government priorities, with the recent five-year Aids programme specifically pledging to address the plight of vulnerable children.
The scale of the problem remains daunting however with the Medical Research Council estimating that some 45 000 children under 15 died due to Aids in 2006.
Glenda Gray, director of the Johannesburg-based Perinatal HIV Research Unit, said drug firms had not prioritised treatment for children as rates of mother to child transmissions were much lower in the developed world than Africa.
"Paediatric formulations are not a big priority for big companies. You don't make lots of money from children."
Another face to the children's crisis also remains -- the estimated 11 million children in sub-Saharan Africa who have lost one or both parents to the disease and are often left to fend for themselves.
- AFP