Health Care for 500 HIV+ Children in Zambia

Mother's Day is May 12 - give a gift of a healthy baby to a Mom in Zambia. The Power of Love team would like to thank its friends and donors who provide support to its pediatric HIV/AIDS care program in Zambia. With generous support from donors, we have been able continue to improve the lives of several hundred children and families impacted by HIV/AIDS and malaria in Zambia. To learn more click here.

PMTCT (Prevention of Mother to child transmission)

One of the elements of our pediatric HIV/AIDs care program is PMTCT. As discussed in our last report, eleven children were born in our Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) Program in 2012 and all 11 children were born HIV negative. This is remarkable as the new born babies have HIV+ mothers and siblings. In fact of the 23 children born since we launched the PMTCT program, 22 have been born HIV negative.

Given below are stories of two children born HIV free to HIV positive moms in our program. These babies have confirmed our belief that with proper intervention via PMTCT we can reduce/eliminate new pediatric HIV infections. As always, we appreciate your support as we could not have done this without you.

Emmanuel was born HIV free in September 2011. His parents and older sister, Charity are HIV positive. Charity is enrolled in our pediatric HIV/AIDS care program since 2006 and Emmanuel's mom was enrolled in our PMTCT program in early 2011. Emmanuel's mom was provided with counseling, guidance, and monitoring of her medication regime till Emmanuel was born. She is happy that Emmanuel is HIV negative and participates actively in the Saturday afternoon Safe Park program. She brings Charity to the Safe Park program where Charity participates in organized games with other children and gets help with homework.

Bupe: Bupe's mom was identified as pregnant during a weekly home visit for her son Ben, who is enrolled in our pediatric HIV/AIDS care program. Bupe's mom was enrolled in our PMTCT program and was monitored and counseled by the Project Nurse. Bupe (means Gift) was born HIV free on May 20, 2012. She has been tested three times for HIV (July 5, 2012, October 9, 2012, and on December 21, 2012) and all three tests confirmed her HIV negative status. Bupe's mom and family are happy that Bupe is HIV free even though Ben (her older brother) is HIV positive.

Please donate generously to this program so that we can meet our goal of 100% HIV free births, and all 200 HIV positive children can continue to lead healthy and close to normal lives.

Happy Mother's Day. 

Links:

• Summary of our pediatric HIV/AIDS care program
• What makes our program unique?
• News from the field you will love

Training Provided to Caregivers of children in our program

While designing our pediatric HIV/AIDS care program in 2004, one of the questions we repeatedly asked ourselves was: how can this program strengthen the community and empower caregivers (many of them grandmothers) to take care of their family members? We wanted this program to do more than provide food, medicines and health care services to HIV positive children in the community of Matero, in Lusaka, Zambia. We wanted to provide the right tools to the community to take of their family members. Our goal was strengthen the women and grandmothers, so that they could take care of their own children and sick family members at home. With the help of the Harvard School of Public Health, we developed a curriculum especially designed for women caregivers in Zambia. When a child is enrolled in our pediatric HIV/AIDS care program, the parent/guardian undergoes week long training in caring for an HIV positive child. This unique approach has led to survival rates of 95% for children in our program. We have lost 11 children out of the 368 enrolled in the program since 2004 - statistically, we could have lost many more as life expectancy for an HIV positive child at birth is only 4-5 years.

The goal of the training is to equip parents/guardians in basic nursing skills and psychosocial counseling so that the child is under the care of a trained caregiver 24/7.  Post training, parents/guardians are able to take care of different kinds of opportunistic infections that are common among HIV positive children at home and are able to identify situations when the child needs a higher level of care. To date more than 450 caregivers have been trained.

Brief description of the Training Program

The following topics are covered in a typical training session:

1. Child health: Importance of visits to the clinic for young children, Nutrition and sanitation, Hygiene, and Medication, Communication and confidentiality.

2. Basic Facts about HIV/AIDS: Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT), Antiretroviral Therapy, Adherence.

3. Opportunistic infections and how to treat them at home: Diarrhea, Vomiting, Cough, Fever, Mouth, ear, nose, skin problems, Headaches, Abdominal pains, Tuberculosis

4. Review of danger signs and when to take the child to the clinic/hospital.

5. Psychosocial care and support

6. Signs and symptoms of breast/cervical cancer.

7. Legal help and where to get it.

8. Discussion on the environmental issues.

Measurable Outcomes of the Training

As a result of this training, the parent/guardian is able to:

1. Provide better care to the child in all aspects.

2. Able to share adequate information on HIV/AIDS and ARVs with the child.

3. Parents/caregivers are motivated to go in HIV testing.

4. They are better able to counsel the child.

5. They are able to identify danger signs and refer the child to the next level of care.

6. They are able to adhere to treatment and care hence reducing the number of clinic visits.

We would be happy to provide you with more information on training for grandmothers program. 

Thanks again for your support and encouragement.

Links:

• Summary of Pediatric HIV/AIDS care program
• Pediatric HIV/AIDS care program model
• Pictures of Children in our pediatric HIV/AIDS care program