HIV mums pressured to breastfeed their babies
Apr 21, 2003
Pressure from society is forcing HIV/AIDS positive mothers to breastfeed their babies beyond the recommended six months, increasing the infection rate.
By Lillian Nalumansi
Pressure from society is forcing HIV/AIDS positive mothers to breastfeed their babies beyond the recommended six months, increasing the infection rate.
Dr. Phillipa Musoke the head of Makerere University’s Paediatrics Department and a paediatrician at Mulago Hospital said that 800,000 of the world’s three million HIV/AIDS infected children, get it from their mothers.
In her presentation titled ‘Prevention of Mother to Transmission (PMTCT) in Mulago Hospital’ before doctors during the concluded Women doctors International Congress at the International Conference Centre, Musoke said the HIV/AIDS transmission of rural women to their babies was higher than their counterparts in urban areas.
“In our society when a baby cries, the husband, aunties, uncle, and in-laws tell the mother to breastfeed it.There is no way she is going to tell them she cannot because she has HIV/AIDS. The nurses themselves keep shouting to the mother to breastfeed her baby when it cries. There are so many pressures on the HIV/AIDS positive mother,†Musoke said.
Apart from this challenge, she said there is a high drop out rate by mothers that enroll on the PMTCT programme.
“These mothers from rural areas, fall out of the programme because most of these women are not economically empowered, their husbands refuse to give them transport money to bring themselves and the babies to hospital when they are not critically sick,†she added.
Pressure from society is forcing HIV/AIDS positive mothers to breastfeed their babies beyond the recommended six months, increasing the infection rate.
Dr. Phillipa Musoke the head of Makerere University’s Paediatrics Department and a paediatrician at Mulago Hospital said that 800,000 of the world’s three million HIV/AIDS infected children, get it from their mothers.
In her presentation titled ‘Prevention of Mother to Transmission (PMTCT) in Mulago Hospital’ before doctors during the concluded Women doctors International Congress at the International Conference Centre, Musoke said the HIV/AIDS transmission of rural women to their babies was higher than their counterparts in urban areas.
“In our society when a baby cries, the husband, aunties, uncle, and in-laws tell the mother to breastfeed it.There is no way she is going to tell them she cannot because she has HIV/AIDS. The nurses themselves keep shouting to the mother to breastfeed her baby when it cries. There are so many pressures on the HIV/AIDS positive mother,†Musoke said.
Apart from this challenge, she said there is a high drop out rate by mothers that enroll on the PMTCT programme.
“These mothers from rural areas, fall out of the programme because most of these women are not economically empowered, their husbands refuse to give them transport money to bring themselves and the babies to hospital when they are not critically sick,†she added.