Global healthcare advocate Luwiza Makakula braved the cold at Rapid City Regional Airport to bring message to Native Americans. Photo courtesy/Luwiza Makakula
World healthcare advocate talks to Native Americans in South Dakota
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News
Health & Environment Editor RAPID CITY — Thanks to the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Health Board, a poster child of the worldwide movement for healthcare access, Luwiza Makukula from Lusaka, Zambia, was able to address the Black Hills and Badlands area community at a live presentation on Nov. 12. Makukula is an international advocate of support for TB-HIV sufferers. Treated for tuberculosis and diagnosed HIV positive in 2002, she says she struggled for months to afford treatment before the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria came to the rescue with anti-retroviral treatment in her country. “We must increase funding for essential drugs and support services from the Global Fund so that we can speak for the voiceless and serve millions of people – especially those on life-saving treatment,” she told listeners in South Dakota. She spoke in a live interview at KILI Radio on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and appeared at Dakota Thyme bistro in Rapid City, to spread the word about the Global Fund’s help for people who need the life-saving intervention she is receiving. Makukula became an administrative officer for the Community Initiative for TB, HIV-AIDS and Malaria (CITAM+) of Zambia, after losing her husband of 13 years in 2001. Balancing her personal problems with a desire to help others obtain results like hers, she said, “I had the two children who were still very young at that time. I thought to myself, ‘If I give up, what will happen to my children?’ “That gave me courage because I was like a mother and father to them. They were depending on me,” she said in an interview for the poverty relief organization One. “The fact that I imagined my daughters growing up as mothers and I could be a happy grandmother heightened my strength. This, as of today, has since come to pass as I am a happy grandma of two.” CITAM+ is one of 10 global health advocacy organizations in the ACTION partnership that strive to influence policy and mobilize resources to fight diseases of poverty and improve equitable access to health services. Makukula supervises country-level advocacy with community treatment supporters in the areas of TB, HIV-AIDS, and malaria. She coordinates health and advocacy trainings for community representatives. She also serves as the interim secretary for the Coalition of Zambian Woman Living with HIV-AIDS. Before joining CITAM+, she worked for six years with Kara Counseling and Training Trust, an organization focused on treatment, care and support of orphaned and vulnerable children and victims of the co-epidemic of TB-HIVak. “The most touching part of my life around 2002 was that a lot of lives were lost to TB-HIV due to unavailability of free treatment,” she told the Global Health Advocacy Partnership. “It was also difficult for me to adhere to my treatment regimen as I was taking more than 10 tablets at once every day due to multiple opportunistic infections. “I nearly went into depression, but because I had the will to live for the sake of my two beautiful daughters and also the support and love I received from my family, I thought to myself that if I give up nobody would take care of my children who were still very young at the time,” Makukula explained. (Contact Talli Nauman, Native Sun News Health and Environment Editor at talli.nauman@gmail.com) Copyright permission by Native Sun News
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