ORTON KIISHWEKO, 7th April 2010 @ 22:00, Total Comments: 1, Hits: 1071
After months of hearing about this village which is part of Kisarawe District of 100,000 people, yours truly was finally there.
Touched by its deprivation, one semi permanent health centre at Obonza village was particularly revealing in aspects of maternal health.
This old “3 by 6” metres health centre that serves 70 people every day is one such place that is common scene to ‘young mothers’ by any standards.
At the queue is one Hadija Luzuba who will hit her 16th birthday mid this year, with her 6 months old baby in her hands.
Her story generated particular interest given this little mother’s tender age. Though she got married at a tender age of 15, luck quite struck between her and the 20 year old husband, Kashinde Peter who does small scale farming for a living at Sanga village.
Acording to her account, this illiterate couple tested negative for HIV before thinking of making a baby and that has quite worked in their favour and that of their baby, putting it out of thousands of babies who get HIV infected from their mothers.
With this, their 6 months old baby is assured of hitting its 5th birthday, keeping her safe from opportunitistic infections that kill tens of thousands others born with HIV.
Before last year in November, this little mother was among the approximately 1.4million women who became pregnant in 2009.
And with an 8.2 percent HIV prevalence among pregnant mothers, she was lucky not to have been among the 114 pregnant mothers infected, of which,a 2009 National Aids Control Programme report shows 120 children are infected everyday through Mother to Child Transmission( MTCT) .
The move to check her HIV status helped to prevent a potential likelihood of a mother to child transmission putting her life and that of child to safety.
At the country level, almost a quarter of the HIV new infections in 2008 which were 217704, some 43,300 were due to mother to child transmission.
And from the 596 people infected with HIV every day, some 118 children are infected by their mothers, which is 20 percent of all infections happening daily.
Little Hadija’s baby was lucky not to be part of this 20 percent statistic that pins children as victims of circumstances.
However, even as there are mothers who get pregnant with positive sero status, the gap for Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) services countrywide is still huge, according to Dr Pius Horumpende, a Muhimbili hospital specialist in HIV and TB.
Current settings, he says, show that 6 out of 10 HIV positive women access PMTCT services through 12.5 percent facilities which offer the service, a situation that puts 20 percent of the people on ARVs, who are children in more life danger.
Therefore, in simple terms, it is evident that 21,500 of 43,300 infants infected will die before their second birthday and 34,450 of 43,300 will die before their fifth birthday.Hadija’s baby is not part of this bad statistic that could deny Tanzania almost 70 percent of a full generation.
And economically, the remaining 10,450 babies will need life-long treatment and the cost of maintaining life health expectancy will be high to the family and the government as well. This also results into part of the generation struggling with its health.
It is against such a grim background that the Human Development Trust (HDT) has teamed up with Association of Journalists Against Aids in Tanzania,Tanzania Peadiatrics Association(TPA) and Tanzania Aids Forum (TAF) to bring it to the policy makers’ attention to increase different facilities including funds to fight the existing large scale transmission to innocent children.
The children are innocent because they have no control over whatever their mothers do when still in the womb.
According to HDT Director of Programs, Mr Malanilo Simon, the three year campaign starting this year is to cut pediatric AIDS by 50 percent by the year 2015, which is just 5 years away.
On a continental picture, Tanzania ranks 6th out of 10 high burden countries among the African countries with the highest number of pregnant women who are HIV positive, where, every year, 122,000 pregnant mothers and 48,000 babies are infected with HIV.
In a move to cut children’s infections and improving PMCT, public eyes will be focused to December this year when Tanzania is expected to have adopted provision of PMTCT and paediatric services to be provided under one roof at all major hospitals.
The same month should see the government adopting the World Health Organisation (WHO) new guidelines for PMTCT and infant feeding.
And by the end of 2011, says Mr Malanilo, the health sector should have adopted a policy of using expert patients in the care and treatment program.
For the health sector, this will mean that by end of this year, at least 50 percent of all the children born by HIV Positive mothers are diagnosed and receive results within 10 weeks.
The care and treatment clinic forms will also have to be reviewed to include infant development parameters and at least 80 percent of infected children who are eligible to start Anti Retro Viral Treatment are accessing appropriate medication.
But looking at the bigger picture, funding will also be an issue such that at the end of this year, the government and development partners should have increased the PMTCT budget at least by 10 percent of the baseline.
As things stand now, on average, national response to the HIV and AIDS scourge receives about (743bn/-) $ 550 million per year with 96 percent of it supported by donors. This is against the current year requirements of 1.1 trn/-.
However, available funds is only 726 bn/- hence the gap of 374 bn/- which is almost a 50 percent deficit.
However, with the government having cut the HIV/AIDS budget by 20 percent last year due to the global financial crunch, the issue of funding should be on the agenda this year as the 2010/2011 budget is reviewed.
In the next five years, there are still huge financial requirements hence the gaps.
According to the draft costed National Multi-sectoral Strategic Framework (NMSF 2008 – 2012), the financial requirement is 6.1 trn/- for 5 yrs while the available funding is only 3 trn/- for the same period, creating more worries as to where the other 3.1trillion/- will be generated from.
It is why the AJAAT Chairman Simon Kivamwo says more government and donor support is still needed to fight the scourge that has infected two million people, and left one million orphans.
“The fact that prevalence is 2 percent more in women than men means PMTCT is still a complicated issue that needs the country’s attention as it is females who make the world through giving birth to children,” he notes.
Total Comments on the above stories (1)
Comment
Dear Sir,
Your article was very elaborative. Thank you very much. keep it up
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