MANZINI, 11 Dec 2006 (IRIN/PLUSNEWS) - "Swaziland is dying. Will the last nurse on duty please turn off the lights?" reads a handwritten note at a clinic in Manzini, the country's AIDS-hit commercial centre, 35km southeast of the capital, Mbabane.The wry note disguises the pain of Swaziland's diminishing number of nurses and hints at the reason why their colleagues have fled the country to offer their services elsewhere.
"The working conditions, the lack of basic necessities to treat people and all the dying: it is demoralising," said a nurse, 28, who asked that her name not be used. "It's not just the money - it is hard to watch people die and you are helpless to do anything about it because there are no drugs or other things [to treat them]."
Working in a poorly lit, aging ward, with scant equipment and a chronic shortage of drugs after the government failed to award tenders this year, are as much a motivation to leave the country as any promise of greater financial reward in Europe, the United States or neighbouring South Africa.
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