Reflections from Togo

Ramatou was probably 16 years old. Following a prolonged hospitalization, during which her health declined drastically, Ramatou realized she was going to die. She asked her mother to take her home. She did not want to die in the hospital. Ramatou’s mother lifted her frail daughter onto her back, wrapped her tightly in a cloth and began the more than 4-hour walk back to their village. Ramatou died, there on her mother’s back, as they walked home from the hospital.

Ramatou’s tragic story is one of many that greeted me upon my recent visit to Togo. Hope Through Health’s Program Director, Andrew Lopez, solemnly recounted this story one afternoon. He had grown close to Ramatou and was deeply saddened by her passing. Fortunately the tragic deaths of young people like Ramatou are growing fewer thanks to the work of Hope Through Health and our partner organization, AED-Lidaw. Our approach is making lifesaving health care services accessible to families like Ramatou’s, families entrenched in deep poverty whose physical location and circumstances present often insurmountable barriers to accessing necessary health care services. Hope Through Health is working hard to reach individuals like Ramatou sooner, through the use of Community Health Workers, to ensure the greatest chance of providing effective care and support.

During my visit to Togo I had the opportunity to sit down with nearly one hundred of our patients in a town hall style meeting. These individuals openly and honestly shared with me the challenges they face living with HIV in Togo. In spite of their tremendous challenges, I couldn’t help but be inspired by the strength and good health of our patients, many of whom were on the brink of death when they first came to one of HTH’s clinics. Looking around that room, I was moved to see that for many of them HIV has become a chronic condition, one that can be managed as it is in the US, rather than a death sentence as HIV was recently perceived to be in Togo. For these individuals we have begun to move closer to our goal of ensuring that the highest quality health care services are available to all in Togo. As Ramatou’s story reminds us, we still have far to go to reach the most vulnerable. But we are on our way.

We must be proud of the success we have achieved to date with an incredibly modest amount of funds. But we have much more to do. The work that lay ahead is daunting. But we don’t have a choice. As the head of the Togolese National AIDS Council reminded me during a recent meeting, Hope Through Health is the ONLY organization working to support the health care system in the northern Kara Region of Togo. Without our continued efforts, our existing patients and the thousands we have yet to reach, will surely die. This is simply not an option. I hope you will stand with us as we march on towards our vision of a world in which the latitude and longitude of a child’s birth place does not determine whether she lives or dies.

– Jennifer Schechter, Kara, Togo, March 2013