Fighting a deadly epidemic and history

Eswatini is battling the world's most serious HIV/AIDS problem. Long-standing sexual behaviours and beliefs stand in the way, including those of the South African country's king

- KATHARINE LAKE BERZ

Girls play in a preschool in Malkerns, Eswatini, with toys donated by Canadian visitors. Young women in Eswatini are three times more likely than young men to contract HIV/AIDS.

The MANZINI, ESWATINI seven-year-old girl was gravely ill. 

Weak, coughing and struggling to walk, she was suffering in her father's home, nestled in the barren hills of this south African kingdom.

When she met the girl, Nonhlanhla Dlamini says she was not surprised to find that the child had been infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

"The child cried... She said she wanted to kill herself," Dlamini said. "She was so young."

The 53-year-old trauma counsellor and advocate recalls gazing into the child's listless eyes and feeling a familiar pang of grief. But she was also not surprised to learn how the child contracted the disease.

The girl had been infected by the man responsible for protecting her. Her father, a police officer, had repeatedly raped her, causing a gaping rectovaginal fistula and transmitting HIV.

"By the time the case got to court, she was so sick... and she couldn't be treated in time," Dlamini said.

The girl died. The father was not found guilty of any crime. The power of ancient traditions appears to have made his action acceptable among his peers.

Even with determined efforts to curb the epidemic, AIDS is the leading cause of death in Eswatini, a tiny, impoverished kingdom between South Africa and Mozambique previously known as Swaziland.