Fear of Social Backlash Hampers Zimbabwe's Fight Against AIDS Baby Deaths

Efforts to reduce Zimbabwe's infant mortality rate are threatened because many pregnant women who are tested for HIV are too frightened to return to the clinic for the results, Health Ministry official Inam Chitsike said Wednesday. "Ninety percent of the women who attend antenatal clinics agree to be tested [for HIV] but not all return for their results," Chitsike said. Around 40 hospitals in Zimbabwe offer HIV-positive women the chance to take nevirapine to reduce the possibility transmitting the virus to their babies. The drug can only be given to women whose HIV-positive status has been confirmed.

Often, a woman will not get her test results because she is afraid of her husband's reaction if he learned she was HIV-positive, Chitsike said. The reluctance to confront the issue is threatening to undermine efforts by the government to stem Zimbabwe's rising maternal and infant mortality rates. According to official figures, 30-35 percent of pregnant women are HIV- positive, and 25-35 percent of their infants are born infected.

Chitsike, a project officer in the ministry's Mother-to-Child Transmission Prevention Unit, said, "Twenty percent [of the babies] are infected during pregnancy and 30 percent during breastfeeding." The widespread use of nevirapine should, theoretically, see a drop in the under-five AIDS mortality rate, which increased from 77 per 1,000 in 1997 to 108 per 1,000 in 2000. The drug, donated by its German manufacturer, has been introduced at 36 clinics in Zimbabwe free of charge, and the Health Ministry wants it available at every clinic and hospital by early next year.

Crippling food shortages gripping southern Africa have left half of Zimbabwe's 12 million citizens threatened by starvation, compounding the problem of rising infant mortality rates. Health Minister David Parirenyatwa has said that half of the 6 million Zimbabweans who face starvation are children, and half of these are under age five.

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