Our Baby Our Future - encouraging parents to know their status and the status of their new born babies

The Zimbabwe Ministry of Health and Child (MoHCC) care recently shared that of the 121,111 children in Zimbabwe needing paediatric HIV care and treatment, only 38% (around ±46,000) are receiving it. Low treatment coverage is attributed to few children knowing their status, limited health facilities offering treatment for children and a lack of confidence by health workers to work with children in this area.

The first is something that can be addressed by raising awareness at community level. SAfAIDS have supported MoHCC to produce a set of IEC designed to do just that.

The Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission (PMTCT) Roadmap provides 11 clear steps to help health care workers support parents (and those planning for parenthood) know their HIV status, and the status of their new born child. This is a critical starting point.

To support this an action IEC for families to take home has also been produced (in Shona, Ndebele and English).

Together with posters, and materials to support the good work of Village Health Workers, these materials are already at community and clinic level.

Talking to children about HIV is hard. Very hard, but we must find ways to do so. Even better, let's prevent HIV infection in children.This is what PMTCT support in Zimbabwe is aiming to achieve. No more babies born with HIV. 

If you want to find out more about these materials, and others in the Our Baby, Our Future campaign series get in touch with the SAfAIDS office at 17 Beveridge Road, Avondale in Harare. 

Next week we will share SAfAIDS Children's Treatment Literacy Toolkit, a resource that helps families, community and service providers talk to and support children through HIV treatment and care.