Funny how a little heat can thaw the frozen wheels of government.
Just over a week ago, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca MP Keith Martin asked Ottawa to ship desperately needed medical supplies to Zimbabwe. Millions of dollars worth of cholera medicine had been donated, but there was no way to get it to Africa.
Sorry, he was told, it's too late in the year to monkey with the Canadian International Development Agency's budget.
Then came Carol Goar's column in Monday's Toronto Star, describing the way the feds had shut the door in Martin's face. By that afternoon, Ottawa had suddenly found an extra half-million bucks stuffed down the back of the couch and announced funding that would allow World Vision to distribute donated antibiotics valued at $4.7 million.
To be fair, says Martin, the minister's chief of staff had shown signs of warming to the idea as early as Friday. In any case, to the MP the news comes as an early Christmas present.
Africa is a passion for Martin. He has been there 26 times in the past 22 years, as both a doctor and a politician. In a past life, he worked as an emergency physician in South Africa, treating casualties of the civil war just across the border in Mozambique. Of late, he has been trying to have Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, "a venal, thuggish, despotic leader who is doing everything in his power to stay in power," indicted for crimes against humanity.
Martin has also been working closely with groups like Health Partners International, the philanthropic arm of the pharmaceutical industry. Earlier this year, he helped engineer a deal in which the Salvation Army-run Howard Hospital in rural Zimbabwe got $3 million worth of medical supplies for just $30,000. A shipment of cholera drugs -- antibiotics and rehydration fluids for children -- is due to leave Toronto this week, Health Partners and World Vision covering the costs. That's separate from the ciprofloxacin, donated by Bayer, that will now be distributed by World Vision with the help of that federal money.
It's a hastily organized response to the latest catastrophe to hit Zimbabwe, a cholera epidemic that has killed 1,000 so far.
The disease actually isn't hard to treat, Martin says. "The key is just to make sure the person is getting more fluid than they're losing, along with electrolytes." But that's easier said than done in a country where basic water and sanitation services have disintegrated, and where health workers are overwhelmed. "The whole medical infrastructure has collapsed."
Zimbabwe is, in fact, a disaster. A power-sharing agreement between Mugabe and his rivals has stalled, the political unrest reducing the economy to a mess. Opposition members are murdered, people starve to death as the country literally crumbles. A quarter of the population is HIV-positive. A decade ago, the life expectancy was 60 years; today, it's the lowest in the world, just 36 for men, 34 for women. Yesterday, a study ranked Zimbabwe the fourth-most-volatile country on Earth.
The temptation on this side of the world, where far-off people can be reduced to statistics, is to write off Zimbabwe as a terminal case, to shake our heads and walk away.
That's not an option for Saanich physician Lorraine Irvine, who has spent much of the past 13 years volunteering at Howard Hospital. To her, it's not faceless numbers that are dying of disease and malnutrition; it's her friends and neighbours.
And now she can count political violence among the killers. On a three-month stint at the hospital this spring, the ward filled with people attacked by Mugabe's thugs. "This last visit was the only time in my life that I saw victims of torture." Fourteen men were admitted in May, badly beaten around the buttocks and feet. Many were school teachers. One man died of his injuries. Mugabe's supporters would gather outside the hospital, drinking, drumming, singing all night, intimidating those inside. For the first time, Irvine thought twice about her movements. "We certainly kept close to the compound." So, yes, it's bad, really bad.
But that's not going to stop the woman the Zimbabwean kids call Ambuya -- grandmother -- from leaving her own grandchildren back in Victoria and heading off to Howard Hospital again on Jan. 21. In an overwhelming human disaster like Zimbabwe's, it might not be possible to save everyone, but it's possible to save some. These are real humans, not statistics.
"They are," says Irvine, "the nicest people."
jknox@tc.canwest.com
