I was told that, in addition to HIV and tuberculosis, the majority of the people in the wards, especially the children, had malaria. Now that it was 2001, the blood supply was being screened for HIV. I could only imagine how many children had been infected with HIV just a few years earlier, before the transfusions that were given for malaria were screened. I am still haunted by the faces of the patients on the ward. Blank stares and silence. No one made a sound, not even the sickest of them.
