For no choice of theirs, they are infected with HIV. They got the disease from birth. Reports say there are over 70,000 of such children in Nigeria, writes JOKE KUJENYA
LAST week in Surulere, Lagos Mainland, Mrs. Gloria Bolatale, a civil servant, was called from her office and informed that her four-year-old son, Noah, had taken critically ill. The boy’s health had since the last two years deteriorated to his parents’ consternation. Mrs Bolatale rushed home from the office and with a few of her co-tenants took the boy to a nearby private hospital in one of her neighbour’s cars.
At the hospital, a doctor, after administering some treatment on the lad, came out to the outer hall where the mother and her concerned residents were waiting. He then openly announced to the mother that her little boy was infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) causative agent.
One after the other, each of the neighbours left her without saying bye. As if that was not enough, by the time she got back home later that evening, the story had spread like wild fire. Besides, a gang-up had been formed against her and her entire family. They were evicted from the house where they had lived for almost ten years by the landlord who suddenly dubbed them ‘dangerous’.
Her fate in her work place also hangs in the balance.
On Monday in Abuja, the Director-General, National Agency for the Control of HIV/AIDS (NACA), Prof. John Idoko, at a press conference on the 2011 World AIDS Day with the theme “Getting to Zero –Eliminating the Mother-Child Transmission”, announced that over 70, 000 children born annually in the country are infected by HIV. He ascribed the prevalence to the fact that more women in Nigeria are living with HIV due to inequity in the social, political and economic status of several women in Africa.
A United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report also shows that across the world the number of children affected by the HIV pandemic is rocketing high, breaking all the limits.
The report noted: “This is directly having an impact on the child mortality rate.”
UNICEF Head of AIDS Programme, McDermott, also added: “Approximately 2.3 million children, all below 15 years have this almost incurable virus form in their blood. And none of these children is receiving any kind of treatment: hardly one to four percent has an access to the antiretroviral drugs, which is their only saviour.”
McDermott noted that it is rather shocking that in about 90per cent of the cases, “the child is being infected by their own mother’s blood while still in the womb and the rest while taking the mother’s milk.”
As at the end of 2009, the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that about 2.5 million children were living with HIV. Of the number, about 2.3 million of them are said to be resident in sub-Saharan Africa. Most of these children, the WHO said, acquire HIV from their HIV-infected mothers during pregnancy, through vertical deliveries at birth or breastfeeding adding that: “Every six seconds a person is infected by HIV and every 10 seconds a person dies somewhere of the disorder.”
The health body however noted that the risk of mother-to-child HIV transmission can be reduced to 2 per cent. However, such interventions are still not widely accessible or available in most resource-limited countries where the burden of HIV is highest, and an estimated 1,000 children were newly infected with HIV each day within the last three years.
When The Nation visited the Department of Haematology and Blood Transfusion, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) yesterday , scores of women, with some carrying their babies, were being attended to by health officials.The large turnout is usually that way because the APIN usually bears the cost for HIV/AIDS treatment while those infected only pay for their ante-natal cares and deliveries.
Consultant Haematologist with the Department of Haematology and Blood Transfusion, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Assistant Coordinator, AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN), Dr. (Mrs) Titilope Adeyemo, said: “Here, we do everything we could to prevent vertical transmission from mothers to their babies. Sadly, we see some of them coming when they are already in labour. But we still try our best. It is just that at such times, the chances get slimmer to fully prevent the foetus.”
The doctor, who said she has been with the department since year 2003, added: “For the HIV-positive pregnant women we take care of here, or for those who have been positive and we have been taking care of them before they get pregnant, we do all we could and required to prevent ‘Vertical Delivery’ so their babies would not be infected at the point of birth which is what we call “Mother-to-Child Transmission.
“And I can confidently that you that for those we handle and give birth here with us, the rate of their babies getting infected have been less than one per cent. So, less than one per cent of the women who come for care and take treatment here have their babies infected. Another thing is that, majority of the women we take care of here are in their reproductive stages of life between the ages of 18 and 45. That means, more than about 80 per cent of the women we see are highly susceptible and they also constitute the majority of people with HIV/AIDS.
“The problem with majority of them is ignorance, misinformation and lack of education.
“I believe that the about 400 women we handle in this tertiary institution daily, are just a tip of the iceberg.
“We all need to know that babies can be prevented from getting the HIV, if their mothers start attending ante-natal treatments early enough. We must make that a collective effort and help the innocent babies live HIV-free lives. Early stages of pregnancy is the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, the first three months; every pregnant woman must have been fully tested and checked to see if there was anything wrong anywhere. It is best to be sure that the woman and her baby are fine before the seventh month so the baby can be protected.”
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Children at the mercy of HIV