Pregnant and diagnosed with HIV: the group providing support for mothers

Thirteen years ago, when Babalwa Mbono was eight months pregnant with her second child, she went to her clinic in Cape Town, South Africa, to have a routine HIV test.

“I went with confidence because my first child was negative and I was negative then,” she says. When the test came back positive, Mbono couldn’t believe it. “When the counsellor who tested me showed me the results I thought, ‘you’re joking!’ I even asked her if she was sure.”

Mbono left the clinic in a daze and went home to reflect on the news, still in denial. She looked healthy and well, unlike her sister who had died three years previously from Aids-related tuberculosis. “For me, [the result] was something that was not real,” Mbono adds.

Nowadays many people in South Africa know about HIV. The country has the biggest and most high-profile epidemic in the world, with an estimated 7 million people living with the condition, according to UNAids figures. But in 2003 it was not a big topic, and discussions usually revolved around death, says Mbono. The fear of what having HIV might mean for her unborn child started to creep in, and she worried that she would not live long enough to care for a baby who might be infected.

When Mbono found out that she had HIV, South Africa’s government was still deciding whether to make antiretroviral treatment (ARVs) available to all, despite a third of pregnant women testing positive. Today, 48% of infected South African adults are on ARVs.

Back at the clinic, Mbono was linked up to a mentor mother through Johnson & Johnson’s mothers2mothers (M2M) programme. The scheme started in 2001 and has helped 1.4 million HIV-positive mothers in nine sub-Saharan African countries. It currently operates in Kenya, South Africa, Malawi, Lesotho, Uganda, Swaziland and Zambia – seven countries where it has virtually eliminated mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) among its patients, with a 2.1% transmission rate (the UN classifies virtual elimination as less than 5%).

Mbono’s HIV-positive mentor allayed her fears about death and her anger towards her husband, whom she blamed for giving her HIV after he tested positive with a much higher viral load. Through M2M,Mbono learned about taking ARVs to reduce the risk of MTCT in the womb and during breastfeeding, and about how to change her lifestyle to live a long and happy life with her children.

Last year, South Africa was one of six priority countries (all in sub-Saharan Africa) to meet a Global Plan target of reducing MTCT by 90%, with 95% of pregnant women with HIV on ARVs and an 84% reduction in new HIV infections among children.

Over the past year, Cuba, Belarus, Armenia and Thailand – non-priority countries – managed to eliminate MTCT altogether. In South Africa, mother-to-child transmission of HIV has fallen to 3.5%, putting the country within reach of eliminating paediatric infections, although maternal mortality remains high.

The M2M programme “makes the person feel supported”, Mbono says. “It’s a sisterhood, and it makes you feel like you have a family to cry on.” Through counselling, which helps to breaks down the stigma still attached to HIV/Aids in South Africa despite its high prevalence, Mbono also found the courage to confide in her parents and siblings.

And six months ago, she decided to disclose her HIV status to her daughter Anathi, who had just turned 13. “It really felt shocking,” says Anathi, who feared that there would be no one to look after her seven-year-old brother, who was born HIV negative. “I was afraid that she would leave us.”

Mbono reassured her daughter that she had tested negative when she was 18 months old, but Anathi decided to go alone to the clinic and be tested anyway, where she also accessed free counselling from health workers.

“I was so, so scared, but eventually they just sat with me and told me to not freak out and to not think negative things about my mum,” Anathi says. Over the two days she waited for her results, she spent time with her mother and learned more about M2M, even reading her mentoring books.

Mbono’s experience with M2M made her give up unhealthy habits, such as not eating properly and drinking alcohol, and inspired her to become a mentor mother in 2003. “The [programme] gave me the strength to go out there and tell people about HIV and correct the mistakes that people are making and [that] I also made when I didn’t have any information.”

She has gone from counselling others on HIV/Aids and family planning, to training other mentors and seeing them become nurses, social workers and students.

“What makes me most happy [is] when I see a woman who had broken up in pieces when she was told about HIV … and when you see her on the next visit she is much better than the day she left.”

Some 95% of babies in M2M’s South Africa programme test negative for HIV at 18 months, and that also makes Mbono proud. “That makes me feel that I’ve done my job, because 18 months is a long time for the mother to be supported and to be educated. There are so many challenges that they come across, and we are there [for them].”

Anathi set up a counselling group at school to discuss HIV and sex with 18 girls and five teachers, as well as a drama group to perform plays to parents and pupils that discuss staying HIV negative and breaking down stigma.

“Most people don’t talk about it … Young people are not getting enough information about HIV,” she says. Anathi has a friend who she says became a recluse after she found out she is positive, and she knows two girls who have gone off the rails since their mothers recently died of Aids.

But for Anathi, dealing with her mother’s HIV has made them stronger and brought them closer together.

She still worries about how well her mother has slept or eaten when they are apart, even though learning about ARVs has lessened her fears of her mother falling ill and not recovering. “I just worry too much and I call,” she says. “She is like my daughter.”

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Pregnant and diagnosed with HIV: the group providing support for mothers

Man, 83, arrested following providing sick wife painkiller

He claims employees at the Allendale Care Residence in Blackley, Manchester, in no way advised him that soreness-relief patches had been banned – only that his wife’s codeine prescription was not allowed on the premises.

Mrs Compton, a former machinist, also 83, moved into the care property two weeks in the past following a series of falls at house. She has dementia, heart troubles and continual arthritis, for which her medical professional had prescribed codeine. Her husband has been her only carer for the previous two many years.

Mr Compton’s bail problems imply he can’t contact his wife or the care home right up until the end of April.

The former British Aerospace employee from Blackley, explained: “We’ve invested 60 many years collectively. She should not know what’s going on. She is a dear lady, and a quiet character.” Mr Compton said he presented the patches following his wife produced a blood clot in her leg that was triggering her a great deal of discomfort.

The couple’s daughter, Caron Hampson, 50, said: “I believe it is terrible. He’s an 83-yr-old guy and they treated him like a thug. He’s not physically intimidating or violent at all.”

Police mentioned they arrested Mr Compton for administering a toxic substance.

A spokesman added: “On Tuesday, April two 2014, police in north Manchester obtained a report of concern over medication administered to a resident at a Blackley care home.

“Subsequently, an 83-year-outdated guy was arrested on suspicion of administering a noxious substance. Officers are continuing to work with companion agencies, including the care property, as element of this ongoing investigation.”

Detective Superintendent Joanne Rawlinson, of the Public Safety Division, extra: “This is a potentially critical offence in which a vulnerable elderly female with substantial health troubles could have come to significant harm and, as this kind of, the police will usually conduct a thorough investigation.”

Allendale Care House declined to comment.

Man, 83, arrested following providing sick wife painkiller

Providing away your information: from Galton and Google to care.data | Vanessa Heggie

Every ruler would like statistical info about their kingdom, whether or not it’s about the variety of their soldiers, size of their territory, or wealth of their taxable citizens. Some of the earliest innovations in mathematics have been driven by the want to calculate the region of odd-shaped parcels of land, or figure out repayments which includes compound curiosity. More than the last two centuries the demand for statistical details has rocketed, and now really complicated, comprehensive, and personalized information can be collected.

1 cause for this demand – which I touched on in an earlier publish – was a new ideology in philosophy and science which advised that the complex all-natural world could be diminished to mathematical equations (or at least, that if you desired to recognize the world, mathematics was the ideal way to do so). When astronomers, like Adophe Quetelet, began gathering information about human populations they often identified crime, suicide, birth and death as predictable as the movements of the planets.

We can collect data about planets by constructing an observatory how do we get data about human beings?

Human Observatories: Making us give up our data

One particular clear way to get info is to pass laws generating it compulsory to give the data up. In the Uk the registration of births, deaths and marriages was created compulsory in 1875 (virtually forty many years right after the Common Register Office was set up as a central point to collate all this data). In a lot of countries, including the Uk, fines and other punishments have been employed as penalties for refusal to fill in census types.

While we may possibly be accustomed to sharing this sort of info, and of program giving up our financial information for the purposes of taxation, there is typically strong resistance to compulsory data collection in other regions of our lives. Would we accept laws that required us to have our bodyweight and height measured, our sexual exercise recorded, our intimate health difficulties kept in a database? Specifically this kind of information is stored in our healthcare data, which is most likely why numerous people are very anxious about how such details may possibly be employed (or hacked, or leaked). There are some great factors to fear about the UK’s new care.data database, which will collect overall health, health-related and personal info from the NHS. But it is not compulsory, and it is possible, and easy, to opt out.

Alternatively of force of law, two other tactics are utilised to persuade us to give up this kind of information: first of all, laziness. We really don’t have to do anything at all specific to have our data harvested. It is collected as component of our program medical care on the NHS, so we really don’t have to go to any energy to give the information it requires. Alternatively we’d have to fill in a special type to avoid it becoming reused elsewhere – and the chances are most of us won’t bother.

The 2nd tactic is to appeal to our far better natures: to level out that the information will be utilised to advantage us, or folks we really like, or our nation, or science. This technique is employed to justify the care.information database, but is also the fundamental strategy for most citizen science projects, which ask us to give up our time or our data so that it can be collated for the greater great.

Height measurement? five foot 4 inches price of proving you’re taller than your brother-in-law? thruppence your information? priceless… Photograph: /Wellcome Library, London

Francis Galton’s Great Occasions

If men and women can’t be forced or persuaded to give up their information, you can often shell out them, but ahead of you pull out the chequebook bear in mind that there is nonetheless a effective third choice: make it fun. Significant world wide web companies, from Facebook to Google, supply us with a support which is ostensibly totally free, but which is funded in component by the sale and use of the information we offer by making use of the support. This might sound like a quite modern data-assortment technique, but it has a solid pedigree – it is at least 129 years old.

In 1885 Francis Galton, the ‘father of eugenics’, set up an Anthropometric display in the Worldwide Overall health Exhibition in London. Members of the public could shell out to have their information collected, and he measured all kinds of things, from their height to their bicep strength to the acuteness of their eye sight. For Galton this was essential info for his investigations into human heredity and racial traits, and part of his attempts to learn how a far better race may be created, bred, or maintained.

In accordance to historian of science Dr Elize Smith, attempts to get individuals to volunteer this info, or organise for medical doctors and qualified anthropologists to go and gather it, had repeatedly failed. It was too high-priced to collect adequate reports, people objected to getting measured, and data collectors didn’t often get the correct measurements or fill in types effectively. Rather Galton applied the exciting principle the place the public had previously refused to be measured or weighed, here they had been paying out for the privilege of being examined and recorded, for the sake of a certificate or possibly lured by the aggressive aspects of tests of power and senses.

If you have ever filled in a ‘how a lot of of this list of top a hundred books have you read?’ survey or finished a ‘which Harry Potter character are you?’ quiz, or have designed a Facebook profile, then you’ve fallen for rather significantly the very same strategy if the Victorians have been willing to give up their data for a eugenic venture because it was a great afternoon out, what may possibly we be persuaded to do? Would we fear much less about care.information and equivalent projects if we were promised a certificate or a ‘ranking’ to say how healthful we are?

If Galton’s exams sound like exciting, you may still be in time to participate in one more anthropometric experiment by sending your measurements to historian Dr Efram Sera-Shriar – particulars right here – it won’t even expense you thruppence!

Providing away your information: from Galton and Google to care.data | Vanessa Heggie

My story: I discovered out I had a cancerous tumour while providing birth to my daughter

Cathryn had to start her treatment method instantly. She had provided birth to her 2nd daughter in March 2011, but after the cancer was found in Could, she had chemotherapy, radiotherapy and brachytherapy from June by way of to August.

“I received via it by getting a dark sense of humour,” she says. “I was possessing an MRI scan for an hour and a half, and they played Adele’s A person Like You on repeat. I just laughed about it, but I totally dislike that song now.”

Her daughter Robyn, only a couple of months previous, would wait outside with Cathryn’s spouse George. Fortunately George could consider time off from his perform as a learning disabilities nurse, and their eldest daughter Milli, 6-many years-previous, stayed with her grandparents. But issues had been nevertheless difficult.

“George would do all the night feeds for Robyn,” says Cathryn. “I physically couldn’t do it. It was also exhausting. For the 1st couple of months of Robyn’s existence, I wasn’t really there. I hardly held her. At the time the target was just, get better or I will not have the rest of her lifestyle. You are prepared to sacrifice the initial handful of weeks.”

It created it challenging for Cathryn to at first bond with her daughter, but three years later on, they now have a loving relationship. “It’s much more particular, due to the fact if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be right here. I had literally no signs and symptoms, I had no thought I had cancer until finally I gave birth to Robyn,” says Cathryn, now 34.

She obtained an invitation for a smear check back in 2005 soon after she gave birth to her eldest daughter, but by no means went. “I bear in mind acquiring a letter and thinking, I’ll get round to it 1 day, and then never receiving round to it,” she says. “With hindsight, if I’d gone, it may have all happened differently.”

Instead, she discovered out several many years later on when her daughter Milli, now eight many years outdated, was only six. “She knew mummy was sick, but not what it was or why I couldn’t play or get out her,” says Cathryn, who would be concerned about how the cancer was affecting Milli. “Now as she’s obtaining older, she hears the word cancer and know it is serious. She’s truly concerned about it coming back.”

Cathryn’s therapy ended in August 2011 but she wasn’t told she was clear till January 2012. Nevertheless, she nevertheless started a nursing program in September 2011 at Canterbury Christ Church University. She says: “I commenced the course not knowing if I’d finish it. I bear in mind contemplating if the treatment’s not effective at least I’ll have been a nurse for a handful of weeks on my placements.

“It’s all I ever wanted to do, I had waited years to be ready to afford it. The bloody cancer’s taken ample from me. I wasn’t going to let it get my dream of getting a nurse from me as effectively.”

Now, she is in her ultimate year of studying and will be a certified nurse in June. She is two many years clear from cancer, but is waiting until 5 many years have passed and she will be officially free of charge of the condition. “I’ve learnt that each day counts really,” she says. “But when I get to the 5 12 months mark, that’s when I’ll begin arranging for my future.”

Jo’s Cervical Cancer Believe in is working Cervical Cancer Prevention Week from 19 to 25 January to increase awareness of the condition and the significance of screenings. To get in touch with them, go to their site or get in touch with their helpline (0808 802 8000).

My story: I discovered out I had a cancerous tumour while providing birth to my daughter