Yesterday on World AIDS Day, South Africa was in the news quite a bit. The executive director of UNAIDS was in Pretoria for the commemoration and along with South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma, called for greater HIV prevention measures. South Africa has the largest population of person’s living with HIV-nearly 6 million people. Globally, women are disproportionally affected by HIV and AIDS as the fastest rising group contracting the virus. In South Africa, women account for approximately 62% of all persons over age 15 living with HIV.
South Africa has a sad history of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. Despite relentless calls by Nelson Mandela’s 46664 organization for comprehensive government programs, South Africa under the presidency of Thabo Mbeki was a tragic wasteland of an epidemic. At one point, Mbeki promoted a policy of natural herbs for treatment, continuously under-funded anti-retroviral therapy (ART) and condom disbursement programs and committed many other policy failures that many blame for not only doing little to lower infection rates but in fact contributing to an increased infection rate.
Thus far, the Zuma presidency has been markedly different. Yesterday the administration announced increased access for vulnerable populations, including “all HIV-positive children under the age of one would be eligible for treatment,” more pregnant women will receive ART, and more person’s dual diagnosed with tuberculosis will also receive ART. Further, Zuma committed the government to “ensuring that all health facilities in the country are equipped to offer HIV counselling, testing and treatment” rather than only those approved as ART dispersal centers.
The data shows there has been significant progress in some countries in both treatment to avoid mother-to-child transmission and testing of pregnant women for HIV. Treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission is now provided to 95 per cent of those in need in Botswana, 91 per cent in Namibia and 73 per cent in South Africa — all countries with high HIV prevalence. Progress is particularly evident in South Africa, where coverage was risen from just 15 per cent in 2004. “Globally, 45 per cent of HIV-positive pregnant women are now receiving treatment to prevent them passing HIV on to their children, an increase of nearly 200 per cent since 2005,” said Ann M. Veneman, UNICEF Executive Director. “The challenge is to scale up treatment in countries such as Nigeria, which is home to 15 per cent of the world’s pregnant women living with HIV.”
Currently only 10 per cent of women in Nigeria are tested for HIV and ninety percent of pregnant women living with HIV are not accessing treatments to prevent mother-to-child transmission.
The links among household poverty, maternal and child health, and HIV remain strong. However successes are evident where governments have made strong commitments to address maternal and child health – including HIV testing and treatment – and where testing and treatment have been incorporated into general maternal and child health programmes. Progress will be stronger if root causes of vulnerability to HIV, including poverty, gender inequality and sexual violence, are addressed.
“We cannot afford to be complacent,” said Dr Margaret Chan, Director General of WHO. “In many high-income countries, paediatric HIV has been virtually eliminated. This shows what is possible. WHO’s new recommendations on preventing mother-to-child transmission, launched today, offer an important opportunity to dramatically improve the health of mothers and children in low-income settings.”
Globally pediatric treatment for HIV positive children, while still lagging behind adult treatment, has increased to cover 38 per cent of those in need — an improvement of nearly 40 per cent in just one year. Recent evidence indicates that infant diagnosis in the first 2 months of life and early initiation of anti-retroviral treatment (ARV) can lead to significant reductions in child mortality, but the data shows that globally only 15 per cent of children born to HIV positive mothers are being tested in the first two months.
“To expand HIV testing for mothers and children, we need to tackle social barriers such as violence, stigma and discrimination, and strengthen health systems,” said Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, UNFPA Executive Director. “By providing integrated services for maternal and newborn healthcare and family planning and HIV testing, counseling and treatment, we can save and improve the lives of millions of women and children.” The situation of HIV and AIDS orphans continues to be a cause of concern, with only 1 in 8 families caring for orphans and vulnerable children receiving external help, such as medical care, financial assistance and support for education.
Of course, a geographic breakdown of Twitter users isn’t available in any public data sets or api. Let’s try something more useful like the maternal mortality rate in Sierra Leone. Google gives me a list of links, some more useful than others, but the answer certainly does not pop to the top. I try Wolfram Alpha and get a result that cannot be right: “483 deaths per year.”
Search result for ‘Maternal Mortality in Sierra Leone’
Okay, maybe I’m an idiot. How about “Maternal Mortality rate in Sierra Leone“? We are getting closer: “0.17 deaths per 100,000 persons per year” according to 2002 statistics says Alphay. Finally I head back to Google and search, “maternal mortality rates by country,” which leads me to maternal mortality country data on ChildInfo.org. 2100 deaths per 100,000 live births and 5,400 total, giving a woman in Sierra Leone a 1 in 8 chance of dying in child birth. Hey, Google and Wolfram Alpha, that data would be useful in a nice clean chart. Hey, world, those stats SUCK! Let’s do something about it.
As part of the Living Proof Project, which we’ve covered extensively here on the ONE Blog, the Gates Foundation has posted this photo gallery following women at the Osu Maternity Home in Accra, Ghana. It’s part of a larger discussion about the benefits and techniques of breastfeeding, which were also examined in this infographic.
This is important. How can the Catholic Church constantly miss that they are sentencing the poor to dangerous births, abortions, and disease by their unbiblical and dangerous stance on contraception and education.
A mother who helps run KCMetromoms.com tweeted the birth of her son. Congratulations Candy Tai. Never underestimate the power of mommy bloggers!
Huffingtonpost World Editor, Hanna Ingber Win, spent time in Ethiopian visiting maternal health programs with the UN Population Fund. This is the first in a five-part series.
When Zemzem Moustafa went into labor with her fifth child - at age 30 - she could sense a problem. Living in a thatched-roof hut in Ilebabo, a rural village in western Ethiopia, she and her husband walked to the local health post. A health extension worker there could tell that the baby was in the wrong position, but the worker could not help Zemzem and referred her to the hospital. And so Zemzem’s journey began, one that ends in tragedy for thousands of women in Ethiopia each year. (via Hanna Ingber Win: Mothers Of Ethiopia Part I: Zemzem’s Journey
)
Queen Rania, Wendi Deng Murdoch and Indra Nooyi posted in Huffingtonpost about Maternal Mortality after a special dinner this week in New York that Sarah Brown hosted.
With the eyes of the world on New York for the 64th General Assembly of the United Nations, we welcomed more than 300 of the world’s most influential women for dinner Wednesday night. The topic of conversation was an issue that needs to be at the top of every world leader’s agenda - maternal mortality.
Each year, more than a half million women lose their lives from complications arising before, during, or after childbirth. Almost all of these deaths occur in the developing world, and almost all of them are preventable.
Behind these statistics are the stories of promising lives cut short and of the motherless children left behind. For the women who joined us last night and for all others around the globe, maternal mortality is not just an abstract issue. It’s a personal one. And in the stories that follow, we would like to share our personal perspectives.
(via HuffingtonPost.com)
Saving and improving the lives of girls and women is central to tackling every issue — whether poverty, nutrition, education, child health, economic prosperity, environment — of, in short, saving the world. And one of the greatest gaps has been in addressing maternal health which has prevented the achievement of any real development progress for decades.
Do you know that it is still the case that well over 500,000 girls and women die every year during childbirth — that’s one a minute. And for every mother that dies, 20 — perhaps 30 — times that number are left permanently injured. And of those that die, the vast majority are victim to easily preventable causes.
For millions of women getting pregnant and approaching childbirth means fear and trepidation of death rather than joy and anticipation for life.
We know that if a mother dies in childbirth her newborn child will be 10 times more likely to perish in those first important few months of life — especially girls. Her oldest female child may be forced to stay at home to care for her siblings, or worse be forced in to an early marriage to help relieve the financial burden on the family.
We know that a girl who receives an education, is more likely to marry later, more likely to have her first child later and more likely to survive childbirth — and a mother’s presence in her child’s life makes all the difference — she is willing to address whatever challenges her child faces as no one else will.
