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Countries in Focus

$25
could provide HIV test kits for 24 pregnant women so that they know their status and, if positive, can seek treatment to prevent transmission of the virus to their unborn child.

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Haiti

More than 65 per cent of Haiti’s population lives below the poverty line and 40 per cent of the population does not have access to health care. Since Haiti’s President fled into exile in 2004, the country has been plagued by violence and lawlessness. This chaos has obstructed the delivery of basic services and prevented humanitarian assistance from reaching the people who are most vulnerable.

Haiti has the highest HIV prevalence rate in the Caribbean. Approximately 272,000 people between the ages of 15 and 49 are infected with HIV and each year about 5,000 children are born with the virus. Mother-to-child transmission is the second most common way of acquiring HIV.

Almost 19,000 children under the age of 15 are estimated to be HIV-positive but treatment for those children is difficult because paediatric AIDS services are extremely limited. UNICEF is working with local non-profit organizations to provide treatment for infected children. UNICEF is also supporting projects that ensure early HIV diagnosis.

In an effort to lower the rate of infection in Haiti’s children, UNICEF is working towards increasing access to antiretroviral prophylaxis for HIV-positive pregnant women to prevent mother-to-child transmission and guaranteeing access to care for HIV positive and vulnerable children. UNICEF is also providing training for medical personnel in paediatric AIDS management.

A New Family and a Hopeful Future for Agwe

Most days, Kiskeya can be found at her home in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, helping her adopted son Agwe Alexander, 6, with his school lessons. Both are HIV-positive. Agwe was orphaned and subsequently abandoned by his aunt when she discovered his status during a visit to a treatment centre run by GHESKIO. Kiskeya is a volunteer at the UNICEF-assisted GHESKOI. She overheard the story and started the process to adopt Agwe.

"Having suffered the same fate, I know exactly how it feels to be discriminated against," she says. "I just could not allow it."

Della’s Positive Action

Della lives in an isolated village in the Northwest Department, an arid and mostly barren region that is among the poorest of Haiti’s 10 departments. It is in this economically challenged area that the young mother is raising her four daughters while preparing for the birth of her fifth.

One day, Della felt very sick. “I was afraid for the life of my baby,” she recalls. So she took a motorcycle taxi to a hospital in Bombardopolis, where she discovered that she was living with HIV.more than 15 km away.

Della’s husband died of AIDS four years ago and she has since remarried. After the long journey to the hospital, Della discovered that she was living with HIV.

Following the advice of her doctor, Della has enrolled in a UNICEF-supported programme that provides medical care and support to pregnant women living with HIV. Preliminary results from such programmes have shown that they can reduce parent-to-child transmission of the virus by as much as 50 per cent.