‘Make PMTCT mandatory’

preventable, and Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission (PMTCT) was the only answer.
The women were blaming the mother for denial.
From the ladies’ discussion, I deduced that the woman who had lost her child had refused to get tested for HIV.
As I carried on listening to conversation, I figured out that Agnes was a youthful mother who survived on subsistence farming with her husband in a rural area.
Like any other expecting woman, Agnes was attending ANC but when her days drew closer, she suddenly developed cold feet and stopped all her scheduled visits resulting in her delivering at home.
According to the Zimbabwe Multiple Indicator Monitoring Survey (MIMS) 2009, 39 percent of women aged between 15 and 49 years who gave birth two years preceding this survey, delivered at home and the majority of these home deliveries were from rural areas.
“The antenatal period presents important opportunities for reaching pregnant women with a number of interventions that may be vital to their health and well being and that of their infants,” reads a paragraph in the MIMS report.
These interventions include an offer to have an HIV test.
Should a woman take up the offer and tests positive for HIV, an ARV prophylaxis are administered during pregnancy, at delivery and during breastfeeding.
However, I strongly feel that a policy o compulsory testing for HIV on pregnant women is the best way to eliminate new HIV infections in children.
The Ministry of Health and Child Welfare is working towards elimination of new infections in children by more than 95 percent.
Because Agnes was never tested, she did not see the importance of delivering in a health institution she opted to deliver at home – further pushing away all the expertise and medications that could have saved her son’s life.
The women went on to cite examples of other children who have successfully benefited from PMTCT and are now grown-ups.
Bottle feeding of infants is not practical for most Zimbabwean women for financial reasons or practical ones. It is therefore important that women living with HIV and their infants be on prophylaxes to reduce chances of cross-infection between mother and child.
But this can only be done if the status of the mother is known.
When they eventually dropped off, I could see most passengers shedding tears as they were touched by how a decision by a pregnant woman to get tested can save a life.
Similarly, I hope this story will also challenge readers to encourage all expecting women to get tested for the benefit of their unborn babies.
And for policymakers, as long as HIV testing is optional at the ANC, elimination of new infections in children will remain a pie in the sky.