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CNN Live At Daybreak

Hospice in South Africa Caters to the Dying

Aired January 25, 2002 - 06:48   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Experts say AIDS will surpass the Bubonic Plague as the world's worst pandemic -- worst epidemic, rather -- if people living with HIV and AIDS don't get life-prolonging drugs. The disease has hit Africa especially hard. Millions of people are poor, near death, and they have no place to go. That is until now.

CNN's Charlayne Hunter-Gault reports from a hospice near Johannesburg.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At first glance, it looks like something from another planet, until you see the humans finishing this place that will soon be home to other humans who will be coming here to die.

Humans like these, who have just finished their first day of school, brought here on this day to help them get acquainted with the place they will soon call home. Some of them, like little Jackie (ph), now critically ill, will probably not have many more days in school. She, too, will be coming here to die.

As will those who live in this Hospice a few blocks away, in a house straining at the seams to meet the needs of those who live here. All, terminally ill. Their bodies destroyed by the often telltale signs of complications from AIDS.

This baby probably won't survive until the move in just a few days' time. But others will, like this boy, abandoned in a garbage can when he was six hours old. At two, still clinging to life, as is this little one, clinging also to my bracelet, fascinated by the ladybugs inside it.

All made possible by this woman, who hung up her nursing hat after working with some of the few AIDS patients in the country nine years ago. She went on to attend bible college. After that, she said she had a vision about how to meet a need that has grown beyond what anyone could have imagined back in 1992, a KING:-style village.

CORINE MCCLINTOCK, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SPARROW MINISTRIES: We want them to have a dignified last couple of months on earth, and the very best that human nature can give to them.

HUNTER-GAULT: With a gift of several thousand dollars from a European donor and some government grants, Corine McClintock hired an architect who had created the kind of structure she said she saw in her vision. He says it's a shape ideally suited for the terminally ill.

DAVID VAN DER BERG, ARCHITECT: These days, they know shapes that definitely influence people. And this type of building is a retardant (ph) of a beneficial energy wave -- beneficial to humans.

HUNTER-GAULT: Ultimately, some 450 AIDS-affected adults and children will live in 24 cluster units. In the spirit of the self- sufficiency of kibbutz life, there will also be a cluster for crafts, where those who are able will create items for sale. There will also be a school.

LYNETTE NEL, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: To other children, a normal disease, it would just be two weeks out of school. For our children, it could take their life.

HUNTER-GAULT: But the school will have to wait until more money is raised, as will some of the other buildings on the drawing boards.

Meanwhile, locals who have been hired from the ranks of the unemployed are also working kibbutz-style. Having been given the materials to make bricks, they sell the bricks to the project, as others build the structures which take only about a day and a half.

(on camera): With this village almost up and running, those whose vision made it possible now have another vision: to see villages like this in every province of this country, if not every country in Africa.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault, CNN, Roodeport, South Africa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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