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Solidarity
Summer 2002
07/29/2002
Matola (Mozambique)
Baby girl born from one of the first women undergoing treatment with antiretroviral drugs
After three months from the beginning of the treatment to pregnant women with antiretroviral drugs, the first baby girl �protected� from the virus was born in the Health Center of Matola II.
The treatment to pregnant women with antiretroviral drugs started in May, in the Health center of Matola II, a treatment that is aimed at preventing the transmission of the disease from mother to child. Since then the Community has taken into therapy almost 300 women. The baby girl of one of these women was just born.
Today everybody is happy in the Health Center of Matola II, where the Community has started the program aimed at preventing the transmission mother-child of the AIDS virus. C., 24 years old, IHV positive, with two children who have already died from AIDS, just recently gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. C. was one of the first women who, since last May, have taken part into our program.
I remember the first meeting with her, a young woman who came to our center when she was already seven months pregnant. She was terrified at the thought of tests, afraid of syringes, tools she had never seen. But, laughing and holding her hand, her fear was overcome. Then we had to tell her that she was HIV positive: it was a difficult and painful moment for her. C. Had heard of AIDS as a great curse, a condemnation without hope. She had already gone through the pain of losing two children without understanding the reason for it. Our first meeting with her was an encounter with a woman resigned to a destiny that seemed impossible to fight.
Week after week � every time C. came to the center to receive the therapy � the friendship wither grew. She started speaking about her life. She told us a story of violence, of abandonment, of pain for the loss of many people dear to her. The millions of victims that AIDS kills in Africa are not numbers. They are people, stories, and faces. C. would talk with us, worried about the future of her next baby. Will she have to raise her by herself? Will she be an orphan? She told us her fear of tomorrow. A tomorrow that looked difficult and uncertain.
 But in the encounter with the doctors, the nurses, the friends of the Community, C. received good news: AIDS could be fought, her baby�s life could be preserved. Our clinic , then became, first of all, the place of hope. The hope to be cured and supported and to be able to have a healthy baby.
C., made a choice with these new friends; it is the choice to fight and not to give in to resignation and desperation. And yet even before starting this struggle she had already won her first battle: Against solitude and abandonment. She would never again fight alone.
From the seventh month of pregnancy she started the treatment with antiretroviral drugs under the protocol of the Community. C. Did not know, but she was one of the first women in Africa to use that new protocol, whose aim is not only to preserve the life of the child, but also to cure the mother.
The delivery occurred a few days before the due date, in the middle of the night while C. was still in her poor hut of dirt and tin. How could she reach the health center of Matola II, where � she was sure- she would receive help? Moving, in these areas of huts and shacks, is very difficult during the day, even more at night, without any transportation. C. With the help of some neighbors started to walk to reach the Center in Matola. She did not manage it and she had to stop on her way in another hospital where the baby was born.
 And yet C. did not give up. Truly the word resignation seems to have disappeared from her vocabulary. As soon as she regained forces, right after the delivery, she started walking again, in spite of the cold of the Mozambican winter. She hugged her baby girl on her chest, wrapped in a blanket and started to go towards the Center of Matola II. She knew � as during the previous weeks, she had been carefully instructed � that she had to reach our Center as soon as possible so that the child could receive the drugs that could defend him from the virus. Fainting, she reached the center, but she succeeded to do it in time. The baby girl received the necessary treatment.
C. will also continue to receive her treatment, and everything she needs to allow her to nurse the baby safely. Another battle was won!
Today everyone is happy at Matola II. But it is only the beginning. The number of our �patients� and friends is growing every
day...
Leonardo
Emberti
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