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Climate shifts take health toll on South Africa's HIV infected

Thu, 7 Apr 2011 13:06 GMT

Source: alertnet // Fidelis Zvomuya

Thombizodwa Maseko sits outside her home in Hlabisa, South Africa. ALERTNET/Fidelis Zvomuya

HLABISA, South Africa (AlertNet) - Since HIV/AIDS left her husband bedridden and weak, the burden of putting food on the table has fallen solely on Thombizodwa Maseko's shoulders.

Waking early every morning, she walks five kilometers to fetch fuel, firewood and water before spending some time tending to her small plot of land in Hlabisa in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province.

She cultivates by hand. There are no tractors, oxen or ploughs to help work the field that is the main source of food for Maseko, her husband and their six children.

As if life wasn't hard enough, Maseko is worried about her crops - every year they receive less and less rain.

"At times I feel God is unfair," she says as she finishes dressing her 4-year-old son for school. "I have become the father and mother of this house, feeding and taking care of my sick husband. The rains are no longer coming the way they used to 10 years ago. We are harvesting nothing."

Normal annual rainfall for Hlabisa, one of KwaZulu-Natal's poorest areas, is 766 mm, but over the past few years the area has been receiving less than half that amount, according to the South African Weather Service.

A long rainless stretch this year has underscored the urgency of water problems in a region that used to produce much of the country's corn, livestock and cotton.

"I tried to grow some crops this season, but this is what we have," Maseko says pointing to a plot carved out of a rocky hillside, where clumps of maize grow only knee high.

"I think I'm going to lose all my harvest this year. If we don't get rain before May, I won't be able to harvest anything,” she said.

Climate change is making life particularly hard for southern African communities dealing with poverty, high rates of HIV/AIDS and now increasingly extreme weather that threatens food supplies.

Unreliable harvests often means less food to go around and lower levels of nutrition, a threat to families like Maseko’s because nutritious food is key to keeping HIV-positive people healthy as long as possible.

Scientists say climate shifts now underway are likely to bring about more extreme weather around the world, including worsening droughts, floods and storms.

Many of those problems have both direct and indirect impacts on health. Besides affecting harvests and nutrition, a warming climate allows mosquitoes and other disease-transmitting insects to move to new locations, bringing with them diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, experts say.

HEALTH IMPACT

According to the South African Department of Health, Hlabisa has seen more frequent outbreaks of malaria in recent years. Deaths from the disease rose to 423 last year in South Africa compared with 14 in 1992.

Dr Constansia Musvoto, a researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), says South Africa has become warmer by 0.7 degrees Celsius over the past century, increasing the amount of the country vulnerable to malaria. Mosquitoes that carry the parasite thrive in warmer climates and cannot survive in temperatures below 15 degrees Celsius.

Under current climate change projections, "temperatures will increase by up to 6 degrees Celsius, while rainfall will drop by as much as 40 percent in some parts of the region (in the next 50 years). Due to rising temperatures, malaria will spread more widely," Musvoto predicted.

Malaria is not the only threat. Lower crop yields due to changing weather patterns may result in malnutrition and under-nutrition for those depending on subsistence farming, experts say.

A lack of fresh water could lead to increasing rates of diarrhoeal disease such as cholera and dysentery.

At greatest risk are the most weakened and vulnerable, such as Maseko's husband, one of at least 5.7 million people infected with HIV in South Africa.

With a population of 50 million, South Africa has one of the world's highest Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection rates. As many as 1,000 people die every day of AIDS-related illnesses.

Standing at the door of her small hut hidden deep in the swaying grass, with her husband lying coughing inside, Maseko talks of the threat posed by changing weather patterns and HIV/AIDS.

She says a combination of unpredictable weather and a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS means agricultural skills and know-how have been lost. Fewer people are now able to work the land, particularly as they must care for sick relatives or are ailing themselves.

Families like Maseko's are losing income in a district which is already one of the most deprived.

Only 13 percent of the people in the district are formally employed according to the municipality's 2010 Integrated Development Plan. More than 60 percent of the households use water from unprotected springs, dams, stagnant pools and rivers.

Over 47 percent of the households do not have any form of sanitation service, and 77.4 percent have no electricity for heating.

Many women in the community are caring for their sick husbands, reducing the time they can devote to their children and to planting, harvesting and marketing crops. When their husbands die, they are often stripped of credit and land rights in a cycle of vulnerability, and some eventually die themselves of HIV/AIDS, contracted from their husbands.