Here is a sample of Chapter 5 of ONE: A Face Behind the Numbers. ![]()
The sight was shocking. Peering into the medical ward of Queen Elizabeth Hospital was like peering into a corner of hell. AIDS has overtaken the hospital. Seventy percent of the medical-ward admissions are AIDS-related, but the hospital lacks the proper medications to treat the sick. So the patients come to die in ever increasing numbers, far beyond any capacity to manage. Two to a bed; sometimes three to a bed. When the beds overflow, the next wave of the dying huddle on the floor under the beds, to stay out of the way of the families, nurses, and doctors passing through the wards. The constant low-level moans and fixed gazes of emaciated faces fill the ward. These patients are dying of poverty as much as they are dying of AIDS. In the next corridor is an outpatient service that offers AIDS drugs. Four hundred or so patients are successfully being treated with antiretrovirals. They are the tiny fraction who can afford to pay approximately $1.00 per day out of pocket for the medicines.



Hey! YEa! that’s my picture!
