The Nation
UNICEF early this year put the number of children infected with HIV at a staggering 22,000 annually. Apart from living with the virus, many of the children also contract myriad of diseases that impact negatively on their day to day life, while in extreme cases, the virus claims their lives together with their parents’. INNOCENT DURU.
• How some, including parents, were killed by virus
• Mother-to-child transmission spikes over expectant mothers’ failure to go for screening
• HIV-positive mothers reveal how they gave birth to HIV-negative babies
• 22,000 Nigerian children infected annually – UNICEF
Tobi in his infantile innocence had no faintest idea of the misery that awaited his life when his mother was delivered of him some years ago.
The family was ecstatic at his birth, rejoicing that they had been blessed with a bouncing baby boy. The innocent boy was not left out of the happiness that had pervaded the family as he smiled endlessly and kicked the air with his legs as his parents played with him.
But the joy that pervades the family turned out to be only momentary as the vicissitudes of life set in barely ten months after his birth. First, he became an orphan as his parents died from HIV complications.
“He also tested positive and I have been the one taking care of him since then,” the grandmother who was suffering from leg pains said in Yoruba.
And as if the burden of living with HIV was not enough, life dealt another blow on the young boy as he was afflicted by epilepsy.
“He also suffers from epilepsy and that requires a different medical attention. The drugs for epilepsy are not free and they are quite expensive. They cost about N7, 000 monthly.
“I don’t know the cause of the epilepsy, but it also started from childhood.”
Then came the challenge of stigmatisation which has robbed him of his right to basic education.
The distraught old woman said: “He is no longer going to school because I can’t afford to be taking him to school every day. I have a challenge with my legs.
“There is also no special school close to us.
“I have tried putting him in a boarding school but they refused to admit him. Once the school authorities see the medications he is using, they would ask us to come and take him. About two schools have rejected him already.
“I am a petty trader. It is hard for me to eat not to talk of having enough money to take care of him.”
Emma is another child for whom the world would for long remain a sad place to be. His mother had tested positive to HIV around the period he was born without medical assistance to prevent her from transmitting the virus to him. He tested positive and was later on diagnosed with tuberculosis of the spine.
His distraught mother said: “I tested positive on October 2, 2001 at St Mary’s Catholic Hospital, Ibadan when I heard my first born (Emma).
“At that point, my husband did not believe the report and wondered how I contracted it.
“In January 2004, I lost my husband and I was carrying the pregnancy of our second child then.”
The pains of losing the breadwinner of the family untimely was assuaged when Emma’s mother gave birth to her second child who, unfortunately, also tested positive to HIV.
She said: “I gave birth in February shortly after my husband died. The baby tested positive.
“Both children became seriously sick after their father’s death. Later, I lost my second child.
“In September of that same year, they admitted my first child at the University Teaching Hospital, UCH. He had Tuberculosis of the spine.
“Since then, he hasn’t walked again. I was carrying him to the hospital every blessed day. They bandaged his whole body and I will carry him to physiotherapists.
“He spent about two to three months in the hospital at a time, and before we came back, my late husband’s family had taken away everything in the house.
“Doctors had even lost hope in him but I kept expressing faith that he would be fine.
“To the glory of God, he is fine now, but he has hunchback.”
It has also been a life of misery and discomfort for Amara. According to her mother, she tested positive when she was four years old and has been living in denial because she could come to terms with having to live with the virus.
“I am going through a lot with her,” the mother, who is also living with the virus, said despondently.
“She was four years old when we tested her and found she was positive.
“As she was growing up, I was telling her about HIV/AIDS but she was in denial of it.
“She was at that denial stage. It was not until she started taking ARV (anti-retroviral) drugs that she realised what I was saying, and that was what brought her down. We have been battling with panic attacks up till now.
“It has not been easy for me taking care of my child. Presently, she has to go for physiotherapy, and it requires money which I don’t have.
“She was only discharged from the hospital recently and the doctors advised that we should look for a psychologist that would be attending to her. “What I learnt is that it would cost N30,000 a week to see a physiotherapist.
“It has to be something that would be ongoing before she would be stable and come out of it.
“I earn N20,000 monthly and still have to take care of myself and the other children.”
Her pains were compounded by the scarcity of some of the drugs that are supposed to be taken to reduce the viral load.
“They are telling us that the government cannot afford some of the drugs that we are taking. We have only a drug in circulation now, and that is BCG, and people are complaining that they have been coming down with one illness or the other since they started taking it. “Some men are coming down with liver problems or diabetes as a result of the drugs”
The words of the late Catholic nun, Mother Teresa, that there is nothing more calming in difficult moments than knowing there’s someone is fighting with you, resonate in the condition of Ola.
The father, on whose shoulder he could have leaned on in his trying period abandoned him, compounding his pains and that of her mother.
“In 2005, I got tested for HIV when I was pregnant and the result came out positive. I did surgery along the line and lost the twins that I was carrying in my womb.
“Shortly after that, my husband abandoned me and my first child who is also positive,” the mother said.
Ola, according to the mother, was also tested and found to be suffering from tuberculosis along the line.
“He was admitted at the University Teaching Hospital, UCH, Ibadan at a time, and that was an additional burden for me.
“I don’t know how he contracted TB because I don’t have it. I guess he got it from school. He has been treated and he is free from TB now.”
How medical help saved other children from being infected
Many innocent children who would have been infected and subjected to a life of misery have been saved by their mothers’ decision to go for screening and adhere to treatment plans.
Beatrice, who was infected through blood transfusion at the age of 11 and has been on treatment since 1999, recently gave birth to a set of twins who tested negative.
She said: “I got married, took in and took pay in the Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) in the hospital.
“They have a mentor mother in the facility. I joined the mentor mother and followed all the instructions. I just gave birth to a set of twins and my babies were negative when the results came out.”
After joyfully delivering the babies, she said, she was seized by anxiety when nurses came to test her bundle of joy for the virus.
“I feared that the babies would test positive. At first I was scared because I thought that was what my children would also pass through.
“And that is where the role of mentor mother comes in, because the fear of having a positive child is always there. ‘Oh, so my baby is going to die. Oh, they will have to take drugs for life’.
“The role of a mentor mother says no. They carried out a test called viral load test and found that I was undetectable and with my undetectable viral load I could give birth to a child who would come out negative.
“But the fear had been there that I could give birth to a child who would test positive.
“At a point, I felt reluctant until a follow up came assuring me that I would put to bed and all would be fine.
“Even at the point where I was undergoing the test, I missed the appointment two to three times because of the fear that the result might come out positive.
“Before the result came out, I could not sleep. I was so worried. I kept calling to know what the result would look like. But at the end of the day, the result came out well.
“When I saw the result, I started calling everybody to share the testimony.”
Connect with us on our socials: