In Memoriam: Beatrice

Last week Face-to-Face AIDS faced the devastating loss of one of our members in our Malawi Ticket to Success program, Beatrice.  Just 16 years old, Beatrice was born in 1995 and was in Form 2 at Kamuzu Barracks Secondary school. She died on Sunday October 9, 2011.  Beatrice was a relatively newly registered participant in our program.

Perhaps that’s why she or her guardians may not have known how to respond in time or perhaps they were too poor to have a phone.  This is a situation that’s still all too common in Malawi.  Here’s an account of Beatrice’s struggles according to her mother as told to Arichie Kaliza, our Program Coordinator in Malawi.

Since June this year her life has been up and down suffering from several diseases and two weeks before her death they she was admitted at the Dae Yung Luke private clinic because she was vomiting blood.  After a few days she was discharged because she was getting better and they didn’t diagnose TB which they suspected. And then she started to be sick again and her parents took her to Bottom Hospital where the doctors recommended that she should be tested for TB again and because their x-ray machine at the Bottom Hospital was not functioning, then the doctors recommended that they should take a look at the x-ray results that they got at Dae Yung Luke clinic. On Saturday the 8th of this month was when her father was told to go to the clinic to get the test results.  Sunday afternoon she openly told her mother that she thinks that was her last day to live and they were laughing because they thought she was just joking. Around five in the afternoon a choir group in which she used to sing came to see her and after a while she told her mother that the visitors should go because they were delaying her. Soon after the Choir went and that’s when she died peacefully after telling her mother that she should lie on her lap because it was time to go.

There may not have been anything that we could have done but besides mourning her loss with the youth, we will try to discuss with them how this might have been prevented, and what they should do if they’re ever in the same situation. Namely, to somehow get word to our F2F staff that they’re very sick so we can respond as quickly as possible.