Rights of PLWHA: at the maternity like at home, there is no difference!

In Congo, HIV-positive women should have the right to health as all citizens, but this is not always the case. They have the right to bear children. What hurts is the attitude and behavior of health professionals towards people with HIV. The HIV-infected women who become pregnant are struggling to gain access to health care in maternity services at hospitals in Pointe-Noire.

With the expansion of HIV/AIDS services, treatment is more accessible in most of biggest hospitals to raise awareness and provide support for patients. However, we note that in hospitals, lack of ethics and the refusal to treat HIV-positive women have a negative impact on the health of these women.

Indeed once the HIV test results are positive, the most remarkable is the neglect and the feeling of disdain. Thus, women who are encouraged by the Program for Prevention of Mother to Child (PMTCT) to get tested, are paying the price. On their record, it is mentioned PMTCT and this makes them vulnerable and exposed to stigma.

Health professionals working at the hospital, who should provide moral and psychological support for the patient, are leaving the women at birthing beds as they fear HIV infection; thus some recommendations of ethics are no longer fulfilled.

An HIV-positive woman has lost her baby during childbirth at a hospital in Pointe-Noire, by what she was HIV positive and no midwife did not want to touch her. Many of them after treatment with PMTCT are abandoned to themselves in maternity. Another HIV-positive pregnant woman could be saved by a midwife trainee, although her child died after birth; again in this case midwives feared infection.

In maternity hospitals, women with HIV do not know what to do when some midwives dare ask gloves covering their hands and arms wide. Sometimes their HIV status is disclosed to their families by health professionals without their permission.

An HIV positive child died of malaria crisis, because nobody wanted to treat him because her doctor was not there.

Still in hospital, a patient (child) was subjected to testing without parental consent. As for announcing the results the agent responsible was no longer able, and he gave the responsibility to another person which is a neighbor, who has already disclosed the secret in the vicinity of this family. Consequently, the mother of the HIV positive child couldn’t do her business at the local makert, clients also fear of being infected with HIV.

It must be held ultimately, rejection, reluctance, and the abandonment of women infected with HIV continues. .

AIDS activists should act to stop such discrimination which violate the right to health for HIV positive women.

Blandine Dieudonnée Louzolo

Communication Assistant, AZUR Development