The Sunday News
Mbongeni Msimanga Sunday News Correspondent
OVER 160 896 children are living with HIV/Aids amid calls for the scaling up of Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMPTC) programmes.Addressing journalists at a workshop held in Chinhoyi, policy, advocacy and communications manager for the Organisation for Public Health Interventions and Development (OPHID) Mrs Loveness Mlambo-Chimombe said there was a need to come up with strategies that would curb the transmission of HIV to children.
She said from the above stated figure, only 55 061 children were receiving Antiretroviral Treatment (ART), with the rest of the children succumbing to the pandemic.
She also noted that nine percent of the children below the age of five years in Zimbabwe die from HIV related cases.
“It is worrying to note that over 105 000 children succumb to HIV as of our statistics that we had last year. We also noted that nine percent of the children below the age of five years in Zimbabwe die from mostly HIV related cases, and we are looking at methods that will reduce these figures,” she said.
Mrs Mlambo-Chimombe said there was a need to have programmes such as Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMCT) addressed in communities so as to reduce the rate of HIV infections among children.
She also noted that there was a need for couples to be encouraged to undergo testing 12 weeks after pregnancy.
“As a strategy to prevent new HIV infections in children, there is a need for the community to be alerted on the need to introduce couple testing 12 weeks after pregnancy. This will however, work hand in hand with the PMPTC programme so that children are not affected by the pandemic,” she said.
Mrs Mlambo-Chimombe said strides were being made to reduce these HIV related cases as 97 percent of pregnant women were tested for HIV as of this year countrywide. Other measures she noted were that ART be given to HIV positive pregnant and breast feeding women and the main target were the rural areas where the disease is rampant.
“It is important to note that at least 97 percent of pregnant women are being tested for HIV as a first step to PMTCT and we hope that will help reduce the cases of HIV related cases. We are offering lifelong ART to HIV positive pregnant and breastfeeding women,” she said.
Mrs Mlambo said there was a continuous challenge in that there were mixed messages that people in the communities were receiving from faith healers who claimed they could cure HIV.
“We are having a problem with faith healers who claim they can cure HIV and we have since recently engaged them as well so that we can reduce the number of children living with HIV. We are hoping that our programmes in the rural areas will send a message to these faith healers so that we curb the situation,” she said.
