A Durban sex worker was refused ARVs by a clinic at Addington Hospital and told to “go and work” so that she could buy them.
The HIV+ woman – who for seven years has been making a 113km round trip every three months to collect her antiretroviral medication from a clinic at her home in kwaMaphumulo – said a nurse told her that the Health Department was short of ARVs and was “saving them for people who really need them”.
Nomaswazi Zulu* (23) told Phumzile Mkhungo from Health-e News that for years, she has travelled home to the iLembe district to collect her meditation from the local clinic.
“When they found out how far I travelled for my meds, the other girls told me about a mobile clinic that comes to South Beach on some nights, where most of them get their treatment from,” she said.
So instead of going home in March, she waited for the mobile clinic – but it gave her only two weeks’ supply of ARVs, and she hasn’t seen it since.
“When my medication finished I knew I couldn’t skip a day. I’m not virally suppressed… if I don’t take my meds I’ll infect others,” she said.
Zulu didn’t have the money to travel home so she sought treatment at Gateway Clinic at Addington Hospital.
“I was surprised when the nurse asked me what I do for a living. I told her I was a sex worker, and she said the KZN Department of Health is short of medicine so giving me ARVs is a waste because there are people who really need the medication.”
She said the nurse told her to “go and work” so that she could buy her medication.
The provincial Health Department’s Agiza Hlongwane said it was difficult to follow up on her case because she didn’t report the matter to the hospital.
Zulu finally went to the nearby Lancer’s Road Clinic where she was able to get help.
Marginalised even further
“Sex workers face significant barriers to accessing healthcare and often experience discrimination and stigma within the healthcare system. This includes instances of hostility, denial of services, and even sexual harassment at clinics, which contributes to their marginalisation,” said Megan Lessing from the Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT).
While she said it was difficult to comment on this particular incident, Lessing added that the withdrawal of US funding to many organisations that provided services to sex workers has been difficult for many to navigate.
“A lot of people didn’t have information of what these stop work orders would mean at the start. Those who …have access to the news and the internet were able to collect medication for maybe two or three months. But there were others who simply did not know that this has happened and now no longer have that resource on which they relied,” she said.
SWEAT is working on a database for safe spaces for sex workers and to help them access the services they need, she told Health-e News.
Health-e News article – Durban Clinic Denies Sex Worker ARVs (Creative Commons Licence)
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