“Imagine being inside a hospital for up to two years. You’re no longer infectious and you’re feeling fairly OK, but you’re not allowed to work, you’re not allowed to be around your friends and family. That’s pretty horrible.”

Sarah goes soccer!

Sarah Osman (1980) was born in Sudan, and has been living in the Netherlands for the past 11 years. She’s been working in the field of development cooperation for the past 3 years, and has recently decided to take her skills and knowledge back to Africa. Her first stop is Cape Town, South Africa. After her column Wanted! Home in Africa for RNW, Sarah goes soccer.  In this latest column, she will share with us her experiences of the build-up to the 2010 World Cup in Cape Town. Not the mainstream news, but background stories that often get missed in the euphoria of the big event.

By Sarah Osman

Hospital escape
I spoke to Lesley Odendal who works for the Khayelitsha chapter of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and co-organiser of the World TB Day 2010 Soccer Tournament held last week. The event was planned for drug resistant tuberculosis (TB) patients. 

“Lately, there’ve been huge security measures around hospitals that house TB patients because people have been escaping. It’s a gruelling experience for them because they feel well, but they can’t go out. So their only choice is to escape the hospital,” said Lesley. “Our project is a response to that, not only because it’s such a horrible experience for the patients, but also because it makes public health sense.”

Patient overload
“South Africa has run out of beds and patients are told to wait a couple of months for treatment, which puts those around them at risk. The MSF project addresses that problem by allowing people to come in for treatment on a daily basis and go on with their daily lives. Within 2 to 4 months, they’re usually no longer infectious.”

Part of MSF’s treatment methodology is to offer counselling to its patients. The science of the disease is spelt out to the patients and they’re also visited at their homes to get the family on board to make sure that patients are taking their medicine when they should.

“We started taking patients on outings as part of the project, which they appreciated very much. The patients that are well enough after a period of time are still treated as though they are ill even after they are no longer infectious, which is inhumane. Some of the patients had t-shirts that said ‘Together we can kick TB out’ and the idea for a soccer tournament developed from there.”

Stigma
The event took place at the Football for Hope Centre, a collaborative initiative between FIFA and Grass Roots Soccer. I asked Lesley what her thoughts are on the World Cup. “I’m extremely critical of the World Cup, simply because I know first-hand what kinds of cuts to the education and health care sector were made to accommodate it. But I must say that I was quite impressed with the work that Grass Roots Soccer and the Football for Hope Centre are doing. They’re addressing very important issues like stigma and that helps to build understanding of diseases in communities.”

Internationally, budget cuts to institutions such as the Global Fund that have long been active in the fight against, among others, TB, only put vulnerable groups at more risk. I asked Lesley whether she would agree that the World Cup being hosted in South Africa would garner more support for these illnesses. “I think so, yes, that’s probably a role that the World Cup could play. It’s very important to get the message out there that TB can be kicked out of our communities.”