Aaron Nicodemus
A quiet revolution in dealing with rape victims is happening at a small, privately funded safe house behind the Amanzimtoti police station, just south of Durban. Open since December, the safe house’s organisers were able to obtain free AZT from its manufacturer, and are dispensing the first three treatments free of charge to rape victims.
Most South African rape victims who want to prevent HIV infection have to be lucky enough to be in a hospital or clinic that has the anti-retroviral drug AZT, and it has to be taken within 48 hours.
For those who cannot afford the R2 000, month-long treatment, the odds of successfully obtaining it decrease exponentially. They then run the risk of not only being a rape victim, but yet another person infected with HIV.
There are a few clinics in South Africa that have AZT free and available for rape victims, but they are rare beacons of hope in a country where rape victims are consistently retraumatised by the health care and government bureaucracies that treat them like cold statistics.
The Durban safe house – which has a comfortable living room area, a private bathroom, a bedroom, a hospital bed and toys and clothes – is a place of comfort for victims of violent crime, abuse and accidents. The safe house helps an average of eight rape victims a week, many of whom are worried that their rapist has given them HIV.
”We’ve been really blessed to receive these drugs,” says Colleen Ross, a member of the Amanzimtoti community policing forum, who runs the safe house with the financial support of Lions International. ”I imagine we’re going to go through this first batch pretty quick.”
Rape victims in Durban do not receive AZT at the Prince Mishieni hospital, where they visit the district surgeon who will examine them and collect any physical evidence. Sister Jile, a nurse at the hospital, was interested to learn that a nearby safe house had AZT for rape victims. ”So far we haven’t got it. I imagine it’s too expensive,” she said. ”We’ve got to pester them to bring it to us.”
Public hospitals do not have AZT on hand, and while some private clinics have AZT for their staff, they don’t have any for rape victims. Finding the drug that could prevent the transmission of HIV to a rape victim is a frustrating process.
Jo-Ann Downs, KwaZulu-Natal provincial leader of the African Christian Democratic Party and a member of the provincial parliament, says rape victims ”should be totally entitled to that treatment, free of charge. I think it’s morally indefensible that rape victims aren’t provided with that drug.” Downs has worked with the KwaZulu- Natal Department of Health and district surgeons to draft a protocol for dealing with rape victims that would include the free distribution of AZT.
One of the Netcare Health Group’s hospitals, Sunninghill hospital in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, has a rape crisis centre that also offers AZT free of charge to rape victims.
Elna McIntosh, an Aids counsellor at the hospital’s Albertina Sisulu Rape Crisis Centre, says rape victims are given a ”starter pack” of AZT free of charge, as well as a ”morning-after pill” that will prevent pregnancy.
She says, in her experience, ”If we can’t get over the Aids fear, we can’t begin rape counselling. Dealing with HIV is the first thing that should be handled with a rape victim. I read about Charlene Smith’s experience and it just made me ill.”
Other people who regularly work with rape victims, like Ross in Amanzimtoti, say that many other rape victims’ experiences are much, much worse. Ross says of rape victims: ”They feel alone and neglected. They feel responsible for what happened. And they don’t have access to AZT, so they could, on top of being raped, get HIV. It’s tragic.”