Adjusting to Motherhood and Living with HIV
For Viktoriya, 24, who lives in the village of Volnovaha outside Donetsk, Ukraine, the last year has been an emotional roller coaster ride of joy and trauma. First, she discovered that she was pregnant; soon thereafter, she learned hat she was HIV-positive. Since then, Viktoriya has faced the difficult task of dealing with her own uncertain future while taking responsibility for another life.
Heeding her mother’s advice, Viktoriya decided that she would be better off giving birth in Donetsk, at a maternity hospital that works with HIV-positive mothers and is part of USAID’s Mother and Infant Health Project. Doctors there put Vikoriya on anti-retroviral drugs and a women’s center provided her with HIV/AIDS counseling. In late 2005, she delivered a healthy baby boy, Maxim.
 |
| An HIV-positive mother practices cap-feeding her infant |
Today, Viktoriya realizes that challenges lie ahead in maintaining her and Maxim’s health and fending off the discrimination that exists in her community. Yet she is prepared and upbeat. In a letter of thanks to hospital officials, she explained how their staff helped to change her attitude towards HIV/AIDS and life.
“The health staff did not ignore my problems. They talked to me, they helped me psychologically, and I think my child was being treated with the best attention,” Viktoriya wrote.
The problems that Viktoriya has faced and will continue to face are based not only on her battle with the disease itself, but also with the accompanying stigma and discrimination. Her case is not atypical. From 60 percent to 70 percent of women who are HIV-positive are told the disheartening news when they are pregnant. When giving birth, they have to deal with medical personnel who are ignorant about HIV/AIDS and scared to interact with infected patients. In Ukraine, institutionalized discrimination persists to a large extent.
“So as not to spread the infection, infected women are placed in separate maternity wards as part of an extraordinary and baseless system of protection of the rest of the population,” explained Dr. Ihor Semenenko of John Snow, Inc., the USAID implementer overseeing the Mother and Infant Health Project. Currently the program is working with 620 women, including 55 children.
Dr. Semenenko said that one of the project’s goals is to change the way that hospitals accommodate and provide services to HIV-positive patients, including mothers-to-be. He explained that much of the effort takes place in educational seminars, trainings and round tables for medical workers, where doctors and nurses are taught that with a few additional precautions, HIV/AIDS patients should be treated no differently than any others.
In her letter Viktoriya had only praise for the hospital and the manner in which she was treated: “My words fail to express how thankful I am to the entire healthcare staff, from the doctors to the hospital attendants. At this maternity I was taught to live with HIV and to fight for my child’s life.”
Back to Top ^ |
