Oliver Modise
4 August 2008
A Zimbabwean national lying in hospital is facing deportation after receiving contrasting pathology results after being screened for potentially deadly notifiable diseases.
In addition to his indeterminate affliction, Mthandazo Sibanda of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, who is resident in Mahalapye, has found his name on the list of persona non grata in Botswana after being tested for HIV/AIDS and told he had the dreaded multi drug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis.
In his precarious circumstances, the ailing Zimbabwean man on Friday appealed to the Monitor by phone to help investigate his predicament. At his bedside at Princess Marina Hospital in Gaborone, this newspaper learnt that the ailing man was first told he had TB at the Mahalapye Primary Hospital in August last year. But by December, 29-year old Sibanda's prognosis had apparently deteriorated because a review of his condition had shown that he was failing to respond to RHZE treatment for the dreaded MDR-TB he had been on.
He also learnt he had tested negative for HIV. Sibanda was put on the next level of both oral and intravenous TB medication, including Amicacin. Last January, Sibanda was admitted to Princess Marina, becoming an outpatient soon thereafter.
But in April, results of pathology tests at PMH declared him to be HIV-positive. A month later, a perplexed Sibanda was told he had tested negative for HIV and that he did not have MDR-TB.
"It was the same test at the same hospital as before," Sibanda says, but this time it said I was negative."
However, if the second diagnosis proves to be true, being a foreigner, Sibanda will not have access to Botswana's ARV programme. Sibanda complains that since coming to PMH, his progress has not been closely monitored as required by law. "From January 10 this year, I was put on a regimen of medication that requires direct observation, but that was not done," he says. Caught in a dilemma, Sibanda says he decided to stop taking medication for MDR-TB in June because he found it to be harmful to his sense of hearing. But he continued to seek clarification, particularly regarding his HIV status.
The Monitor team was present when an officer from the Department of Immigration and Passport Control, who was accompanied by a social worker, served Sibanda with deportation papers.
He said he had been in Botswana for three years and was surprised at the way he was now being treated. Efforts to contact hospital authorities have proved futile. A nurse who requested anonymity said Sibanda was being deported because he was a threat to public health and "is refusing treatment".
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