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Fairness Moyana in Hwange
PARENTS or guardians who hide the status of children or adolescents living with HIV are contributing to their premature deaths resulting from defaulting on Antiviral Treatment (ART) or reckless sexual behaviour due to ignorance.
Hwange District Medical Officer, Dr Fungai Musinami, revealed this during the recent belated Day of the African Child commemorations held in Ndlovu area.
She argued that such a development has the effect of reversing the gains achieved so far in the fight against HIV/Aids.
“The challenge these children are facing is that the adults don’t tell them their status, sometimes they are told they will be taking these tablets for their stomach to keep it healthy.
“So, this child goes through their childhood until they now want a boyfriend or girlfriend but are not aware that they are HIV positive,” said Dr Musinami.
“Even if they are aware and mention their status, everything falls apart as they are rejected on that account. So, they end up hiding it. So, what that is doing to these adolescents is that they end up defaulting on their treatment because of trying to hide that he or she is drinking pills.
“As a result of that, they get sick and die. So, we have higher numbers of children living with HIV that are dying because the challenges they are facing have not been fully addressed,” said Dr Musinami.
She said the Ministry of Health and Child Care has counselling and support services that enable parents or caregivers to get guidance on breaking the news about the HIV status of a child or adolescent.
“We want the adults to be aware that if you are a caregiver to a child living with HIV, we have services within the Ministry of Health where we can assist you with disclosure that is letting that child know about their status.
“We want the children to know that we have support groups for adolescents and young people living with HIV. But these are not coming to the support groups yet these are very helpful as they will allow you to be among your peers and you will get the amount of counselling and support that you need.”
Dr Musinami said while the country had achieved strides in its interventions, the exclusion of adolescents and children living with HIV was threatening to undo the efforts.
“When we talk about HIV/Aids sometimes we are talking about prevention like the use of condoms and abstaining but we often forget an important group of children that contracted HIV through mother-to-child transmission and are living with HIV,” she said.
“In the country at the moment, although we have made great strides towards providing HIV and OI/ART services to adults and have reached 95-95-95 targets, our target for children having access to HIV testing and ARVs and being monitored for viral load are still way below that. There is still more we need to do together to ensure that we address this gap.”
The district medical chief also raised concern over the increase in mental illness among children arguing that parents were lax to the reality that this group’s mental health could also be compromised by stress and anxiety.
“When we talk about stress among children, the moment a child comes and says I’m stressed the response is somewhat disappointing. If a child is stressed we don’t allow them to air out that they are not coping.
“Some of the children, we don’t allow them to come to the burial or funeral in some cultures. So, these children suffer anxiety, depression or stress,” she added.
Dr Musinami said failure to pay attention to adolescent expression of anxiety as part of managing stress was contributing to suicide cases in the group.
“There was a month this year where I certified three adolescents in one month who committed suicide and that broke my heart because it means that somewhere somehow we are not supporting our children, we are quick to brush them aside,” she said.
“For some of them that’s why they are ending up using drugs because they are looking for comfort and whenever they try to find that comfort at home they are brushed aside.”
She commended The Friendship Bench, an organisation that has been creating safe spaces for young people failing to cope with stress, anxiety or in need of counselling and has been fighting drug and substance abuse and early sex among youths head-on through youth-friendly programmes.
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