why there is no doctor: conclusion & works cited (12)

The sea of gravestones near Zonkizizwe was almost unimaginable. I would not have believed it myself if I had not seen it firsthand. This scene conveys the real implications and impacts of HIV/AIDS on a health care system and a country that has been stripped, divided, and neglected by apartheid.

While I often asked why there is no doctor, I was able to track down a traditional medicinal doctor who seemed to see no patients as well as the private clinic doctor who did not seem to care about providing real health care to the residents of Zonke. Writing has been done on where there is no doctor and what to do when there is no doctor, but the number one question in South Africa is why there is no doctor. This question is answered through history: apartheid, oppression, denial, and failure to recognize a crisis. The reality of apartheid health policies continuing to affect Black populations and responses to HIV/AIDS can be seen firsthand in the Zonkizizwe informal settlement.

Health was a weapon of apartheid and it worked. Denying medical access and training to the Black majority has kept the population in submission even 16 years after the end of apartheid. The critical period of 1993-2000 saw the new democratic government with its hands tied behind its back. There was no way that the health care system could be so dramatically scaled-up to meet the human and social needs of the HIV/AIDS crisis. As Seedat stated in Crippling a Nation, 1984, “Health in South Africa is inseparable from the economic, political and social structure of the apartheid state.” The health and HIV/AIDS realities that can be seen Zonkizizwe are direct result of apartheid’s legacy. HIV/AIDS in South Africa is not a direct result of apartheid policies, but the impact of HIV/AIDS and the health care system of South Africa is still inseparable from its apartheid past.

Works Cited
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Boseley, Sarah. “Mbeki Aids denial ‘caused 300,000 deaths.” Guardian News UK. 26 November 2008. .

Chirwa, Wiseman Chijere. “Aliens and AIDS in Southern Africa: The Malawi-South Africa Debate.” The Royal African Society. African Affairs 97:53-79, 1998.

E. O. Nightingale, K. Hannibal, H. J. Geiger, L. Hartmann, R. Lawrence and J. Spurlock. “Apartheid Medicine. Health and Human Rights in South Africa.” Committee on Health and Human Rights, Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 264 No. 16, October 24, 1990.

‘Forced removals in South Africa 1977-1978’, paper prepared by IDAF for the United Nations Centre Against Apartheid, No. 44/78, Oct. 1978, p.9.

“HIV and other STDs. Chapter 3, Part 1” Population Reports. Population Information Program, Center for Communication Programs, The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Volume XXIV, Number 3. November, 1996.
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“HIV & AIDS in South Africa: The history of AIDS in South Africa.” Avert.
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J Yawitch, Betterment. “The myth of homeland agriculture” SAIRR: Johannesburg, 1981, p.86.

Kon, Zeida R. and Nuha Lackan. “Ethnic Disparities in Access to Care in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” American Journal of Public Health. December 2008, Vol. 98, No. 12.

Lodge, Tom. “The RDP: Delivery and Performance” in “Politics in South Africa: From Mandela to Mbeki”, David Philip:Cape Town & Oxford, 2003.

Lurie, Mark N., Brian G Williams, Khangelani Zuma, David Mkaya-Mwamburi, Geoff P Garnett, Michael D Sweat, Joel Gittelsohn, Salim SAbdool Karim. AIDS:17 October 2003 – Volume 17 – Issue 15 – pp 2245-2252.

Packard, Randall. White Plague, Black Labor: Tuberculosis and the political economy of health and disease in South Africa. University of California Press, 1989.

Palitsza, Kristin. “A Burden that Will Only Become Heavier.” Inter Press Service News Agency. May 28, 2006. http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=33396.

Posel, Dorrit. “Have migration patterns in post-apartheid South Africa changed?” 4-7 June 2003.
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Seedat, Aziza. Crippling a Nation: Health in Apartheid South Africa. International Defence Aid Fund for Southern Africa, London, April 1984.

“The Demographic Impact of HIV/AIDS in South Africa – National and Provincial Indicators for 2006” Centre for Actuarial Research, South African Medical Research Council and Actuarial Society of South Africa. November 2006.

“The uprooting of millions, forced removals.” For their Triumphs’ and Tears. ANC, 1983.
http://www.anc.org.za/books/triumphs_part1.html#3back1.

UNAIDS 2006 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic, Chapter 4: The impact of AIDS on people and societies
http://www.unaids.org/en/KnowledgeCentre/HIVData/GlobalReport/2006/default.asp.

UNAIDS 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic. http://www.unaids.org/en/KnowledgeCentre/HIVData/GlobalReport/2008/.

Appendix A

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