Ann (left) with Margaret and Joan
I wonder if you saw the shocking documentary last night TB:
Return of the Plague? ( BBC4 )
Probably not unless you had a particular interest in
medicine or Africa.
But it brought back memories of my own childhood in Wales
where I spent four years in Craig-y-nos Castle, a children’s sanatorium in the
Swansea Valley. ( I later wrote a book about it co-authored with medical
historian Dr Carole Reeves “The Children of Craig-y-nos”).
I lived out on an open balcony (left in photo) summer and
winter and it was not unusual to wake up in the morning to find our beds
covered in snow. We were provided with sheets of green tarpaulins to protect
us.
So much of the African story from Swaziland, apart from the weather, resonated with my own
experience – the dreadful food, the physical isolation from home, family and
friends, the boredom, the daily tough treatment of injections medicine and
drugs which went on for months, even years.
And the tragedy of those who did not respond to treatment
and were sent home to die.
But what for me is a distant memory still goes on for
thousands in Africa everyday only worse because of the strain of superbugs resistant
to drugs.
