"I Believe In Health Care As A Human Right"

[Guest]

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[Jill]

The name of this thread is not my line*, even if I do very much share its sentiment.  

That sentiment, of health care as a basic human right, is so important, and the role that health care, or lack of health care plays in Kiva (and in not-yet-Kiva) countries, for that matter, in all of our lives**, is so inexpressibly significant that I thought that health care issues, the scourge, the causes and the impacts of potentially curable diseases, and the politics and progress of same, that they easily merited a thread here.
 

Yesterday, in the Other Pleasures thread, I posted about the film, Thembi, the story of this truly beautiful young South African AIDS activist.  At the time I posted about it, I’d only seen the trailer for it and hadn’t realized that I could watch the entire film online.


If you go to  http://thembithefilm.com/  and watch the trailer, you’ll see that at the very end of it, there’s a prompt from Journeyman Pictures alerting you to the fact that you can view the film, they say, "rent it” for 72 hours for  $2.99, (actually, for what totals up to $3.25, including tax).  I think it's 44 minutes long.


For me, it was so impressive, and it seemed so really important and valuable, particularly for its potential of being able to speak to and reach young people, young people, that is, who quite naturally tend to view themselves as immortal.


If I had my way, a whole slug of you would watch the film, would be moved by it, and would, yourselves, feel inclined to spread the word of it.  It may be an added bonus for some of you as it was for me that Paul Farmer had a cameo in it, even if it lasted for literally, no more than one and a half seconds.


THEMBI’S AIDS DIARY; A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF A SOUTH AFRICAN TEENAGER
“South Africa has the largest number of people with HIV/AIDS in the world.”

“We first met Thembi when she was 19 and living in one of the largest townships in South Africa. We were struck by her candor, sense of humor and her courage. She was willing to speak out about having AIDS at a time when few South Africans were willing to say, ‘I have AIDS.’ Thembi carried a tape recorder from 2004 to 2005 to document her life. Her story aired on National Public Radio in the U.S., and in the U.K., Australia and Canada, reaching more than 50 million people.”

http://www.aidsdiary.org/
http://www.international.ucla.edu/africa/article.asp?parentid=44607


*


** I know, for instance, that KF David, for very personal reasons, has been wanting to post about preventative measures women might take for potentially escaping ovarian cancer.  As that was the plague that killed my own mom, and actually, a lot of my own hopes and dreams, you might imagine that I was pretty sympathetic when he told me that.


EDIT:  http://news.yahoo.com/3-women-accept-nobel-peace-prize-124201887.html
Not related, but nice.  I especially liked the part about Tawakkol Karman’s being the first Arab woman and the youngest person ever to win (to share) the Nobel Peace Prize.

EARLY MORNING EDIT #2:
I just finished watching the 48 minute-long film, THEMBI, online again for the second time in two days.  I never do that.  Then I wrote the co-producers of the film in Cape Town, with whom I’d been in contact.

“Can't get over how powerful I think it is, how important all its messages, and how so very much I hope you all are successful in getting the film distributed, really effectively,
the world over.

I thank you and all those who were involved in the film so very much.”

I really hope you guys, that a lot of you, will try to see this film.  It is so very very rich…

[Jill]

More on Thembi…..

Most of you won’t yet have realized that you actually wanted more, but I’m hoping that there’ll come a time before too long that you, in fact, will realize that you did.  I’m telling you, there is so much beauty and so much learning to be garnered both from the film and from all the ancillary resources there are that supplement it.  I really think that your lives will be very much enriched and your consciousness (-es) and caring about the world so very much enhanced if you will avail yourselves of the opportunity of checking them out.


Now, a couple of pics.

The first is of Thembi surrounded by Paul Farmer, former President Clinton, actor Richard Gere, and the CEOs of Doctors Without Borders, CARE, WorldVision and MTV.  Check out how tiny she looks.  Tiny in stature, maybe, but oh, so very giant and fierce in determination and heart.

The second is of Thembi, her boyfriend, and others with another fairly well-known individual that some of you might recognize.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.118230974892792.10900.118194624896427&type=3


Then, last, I’m giving you a couple of links to videos I’d encourage you to wait to watch until after you’ve seen the original 48 minute film, Thembi, the websites for which I gave you in this thread, I think, yesterday.  

These others will have tremendously more meaning for you if you watch them after you’ve already become familiar with her story.  Both are tremendously poignant, thought-provoking beyond belief, and the second one (available on youtube in 5 parts) contains incredibly beautiful footage of India and of some of the Indian youth with whom Thembi interacted when she went to India.  She'd gone on a mission there to help bring HIV/AIDS victims out of the closet and to try to help diminish the stigma that seems to attach all over the world and that further debilitates their already much compromised struggling existences.

MISSING THEMBI:  


LOVE (AND BABIES) IN THE TIME OF AIDS:  



EDIT: I just watched THEMBI for the 3rd time in 3 days.  I have never done anything like that in my entire life.  Who knows why we respond to certain things, to certain people, the way we sometimes do?  I sure don’t.  

All I can say is that if I could show you, especially, the portion of the film that starts at about the 22 min 31 sec point and then that goes for roughly the next two minutes, I don’t think that there is any way that you could resist it, or that you would want to.  I have to tell you that the South African accents, sometimes, are very thick in it, and that you won’t catch every word.  But I’ll also tell you that that won’t matter at all, that you will get enough.