An HIV+ woman comforts her young son in Ngombe township, Lusaka. May 2005. REUTERS/Salim Henry SH/AN
Zambian project saves babies from AIDS death sentenceEvery year hundreds of thousands of mothers pass HIV to their babies. Most die before they reach two. In Zambia&${esc.hash}39;s capital Lusaka, health officials are taking a lead in reducing the tragic toll, reports Dean Mwaanga.
"I vowed never to get pregnant again," says young mother Diana Phiri, recalling how an AIDS-related illness stole the life of her six-month-old baby three years ago.
Diana, who is HIV-positive, blames her child&${esc.hash}39;s death on ignorance and a lack of local services for preventing mother to child transmission.
But Diana did have another child. And rocking her healthy one-year-old to sleep, she says she hopes to have even more.
Around one in five people has HIV in Zambia where transmission from mothers to babies is the second most common way the disease is spread after sexual intercourse.
Because babies&${esc.hash}39; immune systems are not fully developed, they tend to develop AIDS sooner than adults and many die within one or two years of birth.
But Diana&${esc.hash}39;s newborn is free from the virus thanks to interventions, including anti-retroviral treatment, which can cut the risk of mothers passing the disease to their children.
"As long as the good Lord blesses me, I want to have two more children," she says.
Diana is just one of many HIV-infected women who have benefited from the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) project being run at Chingwere clinic in the sprawling Lusaka township of Matero.
PMTCT services have been rolled out across clinics in the capital. And they are proving a considerable success, according to Makungu Kabaso, diagnostic clinical care manger for the Lusaka District Health Management Team.
"Stigma has been reduced and we are seeing more people coming forward for testing," he added. "The numbers are overwhelming."
SCREENINGKabaso said many husbands were initially reluctant to let their wives publicly go for tests, but that the introduction of counselling for couples had greatly helped tackle the stigma.
Almost all pregnant women were now aware of the options for preventing babies being infected by HIV, he said.
One such expectant mother is Ireen Banda
"It&${esc.hash}39;s better I know my status now so that I can start working on protecting my unborn baby whether I am positive or negative," she said on her first antenatal visit to the Matero clinic.
"My friend who is HIV-positive has a healthy baby girl who is negative because of the medicine she got from the clinic."
Prevention of mother to child transmission relies on voluntary counselling and testing. Pregnant women who test positive are put on treatment.
Kanyanta Sunkutu, World Health Organisation country team advisor, explained that this may include short-course anti-retroviral treatment for the mother during pregnancy and labour. It may also be administered to both mother and baby after birth.
He said HIV-infected women should have access to information, follow-up clinical care and support, including family planning services and nutritional support.
NEVIRAPINEAn estimated 89,000 HIV-positive women give birth every year in Zambia, according to a report released by the United Nations Children&${esc.hash}39;s Fund UNICEF this year.
Without intervention about 30 percent risk passing the infection to their babies.
The report said the PMTCT programme was able to test 72,000 pregnant women in 2005, of whom 15,285 were found to be HIV-positive. More than 14,000 of them received nevirapine, a drug that can be taken at the start of labour to cut the risks of transmission.
But there&${esc.hash}39;s a long way to go. Although Zambia launched a national PMTCT programme in 2000, only 16 percent of health facilities in the country were providing the services at the start of 2006.
The UNICEF report estimated that less than a quarter of HIV infected pregnant women were receiving anti-retroviral drugs to prevent them passing the disease to their unborn babies.
Dean Mwaanga is a journalist with the Zambia Daily Mail. This article is part of a series commissioned by AlertNet from journalists who have taken Reuters Foundation AIDS reporting courses. Any opinions are those of the author and not of Reuters.Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
