Unfair to shut doors on HIV positive moms

Namibian clearly stated that only HIV- prospective students needed to apply for a scholarship to study medicine in Cuba.
Tongues are wagging as debate now rages as to the merits of not admitting HIV positive students.
Many will agree that they will not be safe being treated by an HIV positive doctor.
Some will say that they would visit such a doctor if they happened to be HIV positive too since they would be reading from the same page.
The rest will say it’s none of their business who is admitted into a programme and who is not. It is the prerogative of the funders to set selection criteria.
Organisations dealing with such issues have spoken strongly against the practice, particularly the Aids Law Unit at the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC) in Windhoek.
They said it is unconstitutional and a human rights violation as well as being discriminatory.
The statement by LAC referred to recent newspaper advertisements in that country by the Ministry of Education offering international scholarships, which stipulated that Namibians who are HIV positive do not qualify.
It is not the country’s stance to discriminate on HIV status, but the countries offering the scholarships stipulated that only HIVnegative students needed to apply.
What should recipient countries do in such instances?
Turn down the offer, bend backwards a bit and take “advantage” of the opportunity? It’s a complex issue that opens debate.
LAC said the ban on HIV+ applicants from taking up education opportunities offered by countries such as China, Cuba and the Slovak Republic, among others, goes against the grain of Namibia’s purported stance on equal opportunities for all, the paper said.
The list of discimination against victims, especially in southern Africa, is long as most candidates who live positively after disclosure fail to fill advertised posts.
Reasons given would be that one does not meet the criteria yet the true reason is one’s HIV status.
Another controversial US project plans to set operations in South Africa with the sole intention of sterilising HIV-positive mothers, drug users and alcoholics.
The project’s focus area is long-term sterilisation for women living positively.
Have women living positively suddenly lost their rights that someone decides that they can no longer have babies?
Today, various medical interventions using AZT and nevirapine have enabled HIV-positive mothers to have healthy HIV negative babies.
The local programme, Prevention from Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) enables women living with HIV to have perfectly healthy babies and in Zimbabwe national PMTCT centres have registered over 95 percent success rate.
Of 13 HIV positive mothers I have interacted with in this column who wrote when shuttered after testing HIV-positive while pregnant, all the 13 babies are HIV negative after recommending they enrol on the PMTCT programmes.
That is a 100 percent success rate so far.
When saying PMTCT works, I am speaking from experience, baby Tinoponaishe now 26 months is HIV negative and has a right to live like every other child.
HIV-positive mothers have a right to have children and such projects are in violation of their reproductive health.
Mrs Florence Chikono of Harare is one such woman who did not even think of abortion despite having tested HIV positive.
Today she is a happy mother to a child born HIV negative.
So who is this Barbra Harris speaking from lofty heights and now deciding to end motherhood for all these women?
Founder of the controversial scheme Harris has confirmed that they were making plans to offer the services to women living with HIV in South Africa.
With a cash incentive paid is that not coercion and buying off of the less priviledged using unothodox means?
Harris thinks otherwise.
“We have had huge interest in South Africa from organisations and concerned citizens,” Harris was quoted as saying.
She said they would be joining forces with NGOs and if there are such groups, then they have no interests of the people at heart.
While she declined to identify the NGOs, she was reported as saying, “We have many wanting to work with us. How can anyone object to anything that can prevent innocent children suffering needlessly?” Harris asked.
It is said the organisation started operations in the UK but her attempts to strerilise women living positively there were met with stiff resistance by the medical association there so she shifted and moved to Africa.
The South African health department is not taking the issue lightly so Harris should not think this is going to be a stroll in the park.
Professor Eddie Mhlanga, Chief Director for Maternal, Child and Women’s Health in the health department said they would approach the Human Rights Commission if the project started operating in the country and have it halted.
Harris’ organisation is said to be also working with groups of between 10 and 15 women in Kenya.
The women are given US$40 in return for agreeing to be sterilised.
This is tantamount to abusing the poor and buying their reproductive rights.
It is said Harris once commented that if bitches were spayed, why could HIV postive women not be sterilised so as to avoid the suffering of the innocent children and also as a measure to curb the spread of such people.
“We don’t allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet the women are literally having litters of children,” said Harris.
Who said an HIV positive woman’s child is unwanted.
Such discrimination cannot be allowed and Harris knows that there are now safe intervention methods where HIV positive mothers can give birth to innocent healthy children. It is an HIV positive mother’s right to have a child as long as she takes the precautionary interventions.
It is unethical and taking advantage of poor people to sell their reproductive health rights is a violation of the rights.
We have heard of local women who have been advised by spouses or relatives to abort after having tested HIV positive.
One such woman is Ms Martha Tholana, who in 2003 tested HIV positive.
She said her husband wanted her to abort. Her upbringing would not allow that as a Christian she could not kill.
Speaking last year to journalists at a workshop by SafAids in Harare, Tholana said she was ill and everyone just thought she was being unreasonable to carry through the pregnancy.
The husband abandoned her and left for the UK and she delivered in the care of her family.
Today she is a proud mother to a healthy HIV negative eight year-old intelligent girl.
Discrimination of HIV babies has taken a new twist as in SA mothers can now deposit their unwanted babies in “a baby safe” within the hospital premises.
It is more likely that HIV positive pregnant mothers with no financial backing would make up the large numbers of those depositing babies in the ‘baby safes’.
In Malawi a journalist who is a television personality said he has been discriminated since he disclosed that he was HIV positive.
He was transferred to Mzuzu from Blantyre and was told to foot the relocation expenses on his own.
Such is the discrimination that is so rife that some has gone unreported.
The situation is worse for domestic workers. Recently, a live-in maid lost her job after her employer found her taking ARVs. She was promptly dismissed, as the family had no place for an HIV positive woman who was a risk factor.
The truth is that someone who knows her status is in a better position not to pass the virus because they have been counselled than someone who has never been tested and is happy living in ignorance.
In Zambia in the 90’s a youngman was barred from entering the priesthood after testing HIV positive.
Can one’s status bar one from preaching the word or is one authorised to stop the gospel from reaching the masses? All this remains unanswered.
Today the children born HIV positive are adults and can they not wear the collar because of their HIV status?
In the 90’s case, it could be argued that celibacy, which is a demand to Catholicism, was found lacking in the candidate and his HIV status just confirmed that he had broken that already.
The denial into priesthood spurred the youngman to further his studies and today he holds a PhD.
Not all discriminated people are so strong willed, for most they just succumb to the abuse and die before their time.
It is the right of HIV positive people to be open, fight the abuse because one cannot fight any abuse and discrimination in silence.
Your rights remain the same as every other citizen in Zimbabwe.
May you get understanding in what you endevour to get. Till then God bless.
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