Day 3 of Treatment - Anna

A miscellany of symptoms. Clive, Naledi, Tumelo feeling very tired, and Tumelo feeling it in his bones. Alaena, Naledi and Tumelo feeling their backs sore.  Naledi reports a sensation of energy flowing in her spine. Her head and skin, which have small lesions have stopped itching - that stopped on the first day. Tumelo joined so suddenly that we had no time to arrange tests for him.  Cameron says that there is no point in doing them now - he will already be showing an improvement. I am annoyed with myself.  Tumelo is the sickest of the group.  He really looks very slight, and I wish that we could see his progress measured in figures.

I have been trying hard to get contact with the two Malawians - but nothing. Sad. Hard to think of them so ill, and wanting treatment, and us wanting to give it, and a careless thoughtless person in between. Naledi has many more people who would like to join - her friend, and people from her church - but we say no - we want clear test results, and it will be harder if people join late. I resolve that somehow, we will get some money to finance more treatments.

And what I want, if this works, is that the charities and global funds that support HIV programmes use this treatment, rather than the toxic ARVs that are available here. I am not worried about those with money - here or elsewhere. We manage OK when there is a battery of drugs for doctors to choose from, and patients are carefully calibrated. But amongst the poor here, the range available is limited, and there aren’t many doctors, so they have to more or less take what they are given. So life expectancy after diagnosis isn’t very long - around 6 years as opposed to the decades amongst the prosperous west.