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Tinomuda Chakanyuka, Senior Reporter
PREGNANCY and expectations of motherhood brew a plethora of dissonant emotions in expecting mothers.
Fear, excitement, anxiety and sometimes anger boil up in one as they travel the journey of pregnancy.
Mood swings often punctuate the journey.
The predicament deepens when an expecting mother tests positive for HIV. Fear, anger and anxiety heighten to boiling point at this juncture. Ms Irene Maphosa of Mkoba 16 in Gweru lived such a dilemma when she tested positive in 2015 while expecting a child.
“I was gutted, shattered and became hopeless,” she said.
Ifs, buts and maybes ran rings in her head as she pondered permutations and odds of her child being born negative of the virus.
“I feared for my unborn child. I didn’t want him to be infected. That was the source of many sleepless nights despite repeated assurances from nurses.
They told me they were administering me on the Prevention of Mother to Child HIV Transmission (PMTCT) programme,” she said.
The most difficult part of Ms Maphosa’s ordeal was disclosing her status to her relatives. She was to become an HIV positive single mother, after her boyfriend denied responsibility. Stereotypes and prejudice would turn out to be her daily bread.
Family and friends weighed in with varying theories, opinions and advice regarding her situation.
“I was anxious throughout my pregnancy although I was adhering to dos and don’ts as per nurses’ prescription. When I finally gave birth in April 2015 to an HIV-free child I was elated,” Ms Maphosa narrated.
She added: “I faced ridicule from family and friends. They couldn’t accept me as a single mother who is HIV positive. My boyfriend claimed he was negative and my disclosure pushed him further away.”
Ms Maphosa shares this experience with a number of other women in Zimbabwe, where HIV continues to have the face of a woman. As the world marked International Women’s Day on Thursday last week, it is important to reflect on and pay tribute to women, who continue to carry the heavy brunt of HIV, in Zimbabwe and rest of Africa.
The latest Zimbabwe Population-based HIV Impact Assessment (Zimphia) report has it that, “The odds are stacked against women in the fight against HIV, with biology as well as social, cultural and economic factors conspiring to make women much more vulnerable to the virus than men”.
Statistics from the National Aids Council (Nac) show that women constitute the majority of those infected with HIV (17 percent) against 11 percent for men. Young women are three times more infected than young men, the statistics further show.
Nac operations director Mr Raymond Yekeye cited biological and structural factors as aspects that lead to women being more vulnerable to HIV than their male counterparts.
“There are structural factors that make women vulnerable. These are poverty, lack of education, lack of economic empowerment among others. Their biological make up also makes them a little more vulnerable compared to men,” he said.
Mr Yekeye said a targeted approach to women’s plight, focusing on adolescents and young women, was needed to ease women’s HIV burden.
“We have to prioritise issues to do with prevention among women, especially young women. We have to increase women’s access to female controlled preventive services. We also have to empower women economically, increase their access to education as a way of dealing with the structural factors that expose them to HIV. The longer a woman stays in school the less vulnerable they become and the more they are able to make informed decisions,” he said.
UNAIDS country director in Zimbabwe Mr Girmay Haile concurred.
“For me, it is protection and empowerment,” he said.
“Women are weaker in terms of roles and negotiation during sex and that makes them vulnerable. Poverty puts them at risk, particularly women between 15 to 25 years of age. So empowering women economically will give them control of their bodies and enable them to make informed decisions,” he said.
Head of Communication and Knowledge Management at Southern African HIV and Aids Information Dissemination Service (SAfAIDS), Mrs Tariro Makanga-Chikumbirike said apart from being infected, women have also been heavily affected by HIV because of their social role.
“Women also became the most affected even if they are not infected through providing care to bed-ridden patients.
“To ease this burden on women, we need to ensure that treatment is availed so that the mantra of ‘HIV as any other condition’ becomes a reality. Societal expectation leads women to carry the burden compared to men,” she said.
The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day, was “Time is Now: Rural and Urban Activists Transforming Women’s Lives.”-@irielyan
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