Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2009. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
 |
Voice of America - June 11, 2009
Joe De Capua
Washington D.C.
At the World Economic Forum on Africa, the impact of HIV/AIDS on African countries is being addressed. The forum has honored one program that helps prevent mother-to-child transmission and turns stigmatized women into role models.
Long before the current economic crisis, HIV/AIDS took its toll on African economies. The ranks of professionals, teachers and farmers were devastated. Families were shattered and millions of orphans created. Children are vulnerable, too, possibly contracting HIV from their infected mothers at birth. Something that rarely happens in richer countries anymore.
One of the organizations trying to stop mother-to-child transmission -- Mothers2Mothers -- has received the Schwab Award at the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town.
M2M Executive Director Gene Falk says, "Mother-to-child transmission of HIV is an enormous issue. There are about a million and a half HIV positive pregnant women in the world and one-point-three million of those women are in sub-Saharan Africa. If you don't have any intervention, a third to 40 percent of those women will transmit the virus to their babies."
A few doses of prevention
"One simple dose of meds (medication) can cut transmission in half. And if you can put a woman on treatment during the last month of her pregnancy, you can cut transmission rates in half again," he says.
Mothers2Mothers was founded in 2001 in Cape Town by Dr. Mitchell Besser, Falk's college friend.
"He started working with women who had successfully been through treatment themselves and asking them to come back into the clinic and into the waiting rooms and working with him to just talk to the women, who he was talking to about treatment," he says.
Falk says doctors and nurses may have trouble relating to HIV positive pregnant women, or simply don't have enough time to talk about their situation.
"Having a woman, who herself has been through this, the pregnant mother can identify with,who can speak her language, who isn't seen as an outsider, completely changes the dynamic. So instead of women thinking I've got to run away from this - I'm too scared - I don't know how to deal with it - now, they have someone, who can tell them what they're going to go through and how they're going to deal with it," he says.
It's also good for the "mentor mothers," who do the counseling.
"Our program trains and employs the women who've been through the program itself to come back and talk to the mothers. So instead of the woman thinking I'm going to die, there's someone there who says no you're not. I'm from your town. I'm HIV positive, but I had an HIV negative baby and you can too," he says.
The mentor mothers then become role models, whereas before they often faced stigma and discrimination.
Best of both worlds
By giving the Mothers2Mothers program the Schwab Award, Falk says the World Economic Forum recognizes its success as a socially conscious business - combining the best of the private and public sectors.
"Klaus Schwab and his wife are actually the founders of the World Economic Forum and they have a foundation, the intention of which is to promote social entrepreneurship. And what they're trying to do is get the two sides of the way people think about how to make things better in the world and pull them together," he says.
The Mothers2Mothers program operates at 500 locations in South Africa, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, Swaziland and Zambia. It employs about 1400 HIV positive women, who conduct about 130,000 counseling sessions each month.
090611
VA090605
Copyright © 2009 - Voice of America. You are welcome to use any material that is published by voanews.com, or you may link to any of the web pages that Voice of America has published on the internet. There is no need to request further permission. Should you wish to establish a link to any VOA web pages, please send your request to pubaff@ibb.gov. We would appreciate that credit for any use of VOA material be given to voanews.com, Voice of America, or VOA, and we ask that you not abridge or edit any VOA material which you may use.
AEGiS is a 501(c)3, not-for-profit, tax-exempt, educational corporation. AEGiS is made possible through unrestricted funding from the National Library of Medicine, AIDS Walk of Orange County, and donations from users like you.
AEGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All information contained on this website, including information relating to health conditions, products, and treatments, is for informational purposes only. It is not meant to be a substitute for the advice provided by your own physician or other medical professionals. This article first appeared in 2009. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor. Always discuss treatment options with a doctor who specializes in treating HIV.
Copyright ©1980, 2009. AEGiS. All materials appearing on AEGiS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of AEGiS, or the party credited as the provider of the content. .