Two weeks ago I met Jeanne and Hubert Mwangaza in a poor suburb of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where I was on a video assignment with UNICEF. Hubert could not wait to tell me – on camera – [...]]]>
Two weeks ago I met Jeanne and Hubert Mwangaza in a poor suburb of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where I was on a video assignment with UNICEF. Hubert could not wait to tell me – on camera – how proud he is that all his children are HIV negative. Him and his wife are both HIV positive.
Courtesy: Chiara Frisone
When they met, Jeanne had given up any hope to have children. Hubert convinced her that prevention of mother-to-child transmission could give them HIV-negative babies.
He accompanied Jeanne to ante-natal visits and checked that she took her antiretroviral medication regularly. He was with her during each birth of their three daughters and when they were tested for HIV.
For her last-born, Marie, Jeanne was put on the new revolutionary one-pill-a-day antiretroviral treatment known as life-long treatment.
Women on this new regimen are able to breastfeed their babies safely for six months, provided that they adhere to the treatment. Marie has to take another HIV test at six and 18 months, but Hubert is confident that his little girl, like her elder sisters, is born without the virus.
Only a few years ago, this family’s story would have been the exception rather than the rule. Today, Botswana, Ghana, Namibia and Zambia have virtually eliminated new HIV infections in children, and a few more countries in Africa are close behind them.
However, children’s access to antiretrovirals remains unacceptably low – only three in 10 eligible children receive HIV treatment in many of the most affected countries.
Dramatically improving these numbers is among the top goals for the 22 priority countries targeted by the Global Plan that aims to elimination new HIV infections among children by 2015 and keeping their mothers alive.
Securing child health is only a fraction of the job to be done. Too many women are getting infected and not all pregnant women living with HIV are accessing life-saving treatment.
Between 2009 and 2012, there has been no decrease in the number of new HIV infections among women. We need to redouble efforts in preventing HIV among adults- and especially young women- through a combination of safer sexual behaviour, voluntary medical male circumcision and use of antiretroviral therapy among discordant couples.
Voluntary family planning services for all women, including women living with HIV, can prevent unwanted pregnancies and help reduce new HIV infections among children. Young women in particular should have access to voluntary planning and comprehensive information about preventing HIV.
In the next months, Inter Press Service Africa, in collaboration with UNAIDS, Unicef and UNFPA, will tell many stories like Jeanne and Hubert’s — stories of courage and resilience that will rekindle our hope that a generation of babies born without HIV to healthy mothers living with HIV is around the corner. Other stories will highlight challenges to solve if we are to turn that corner by 2015.
The Countdown to Zero New HIV Infections project explores community, policy and expert efforts across Africa to achieve these goals through in-depth feature stories, portraits and testimonies.
Follow the stories here: http://www.ipsnews.net/news/projects/countdown-to-zero/
Enter the conversation:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/countdowntozeroHIV
Twitter: @ZeroNewHIV
]]>I was very pregnant and very happy. I lived in Rome, Italy, and I wanted a home birth.
I wanted music, soft light, friends, baby on my [...]]]>
Safe motherhood for all. By F. Beaumont.
My daughter Esmeralda turns 18 today. Like all parents, I am amazed at how time flies. Like all mothers, I get reminiscent about those days, 18 years ago.
I was very pregnant and very happy. I lived in Rome, Italy, and I wanted a home birth.
I wanted music, soft light, friends, baby on my stomach still attached by umbilical cord, no drugs, and no epidural. A birth by my own rules, not by a cold hospital’s.
I found a group specialized in home births – Il Melograno. Their package included ob-gyn and midwife, courses, support and, more importantly, a woman-friendly feel. A photographer from Marie Claire magazine would do a photo reportage on my happy home birth.
Our premise: pregnancy is neither a disease nor a disability. Pregnancy and birth have become over-medicalized; women should reclaim it from doctors overly fond of control and caesareans. My family, my colleagues and the baby’s father thought I was crazy. Home births are more common now but women still battle to extricate pregnancy and birth out of the hospital realm.
In Brazil, we recently lost a battle for a centre for natural birth in Rio de Janeiro.
Clueless mommy
In my case, at midnight, after 30 hours of labour, I was stuck at 6 cms dilatation – and exhausted. A home birth must be 100 percent natural, so the few drops of oxitocyn to trigger full dilation had to be administered in hospital, three blocks away. There I went. At 2am my daughter was born – and promptly taken away to the nursery.
At 5:30am a nurse literally dumped my baby girl in my arms and left. No instructions on how to feed, nothing. My midwife and friends were coming at 8 am. What to do? I had never been around a newborn. I was like Carrie Bradshaw in Season 2 of Sex and The City – domesticity and motherhood were not part of my landscape.
So there I was, baby on one hand, baby book on the other, trying to figure it out. This is the most ridiculous and pathetic image of modern motherhood, I thought. How did we end here, from birth as a group event to 6 AM loneliness in hospital?
Less than 24 hours later, against hospital rules, I signed waivers absolving doctors of any responsibility and checked myself out.
I went home and turned on the CD player. My daughter’s godmother had been listening to the Rolling Stones: “You can’t always get what you want”. I chuckled.
Two close friends, one in Windhoek and one in London, recently tried a home birth but ended in hospital, just like me. Still, we were happy to go through labour at home.
Meanwhile, many women struggle to have a safe birth – anywhere. About half a million women die in childbirth very year. There are not enough trained midwives to ensure a safe labour, whether at home or at a clinic,
Art by Nelly Romeo Alves, photo by E. Zimbres
At a conference on reproductive health in Berlin last week, the World Health Organisation reported that one woman dies every minute for lack of adequate pregnancy and birth services.
A cruel paradox: the world proffers to revere motherhood but does not make it safe and comfortable for mothers to give birth.
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