Baby Clement

 
Clement at 4 weeks old

Clement was born at home in Maphiveni. When we conducted our post-natal visit on Clement he was 36 hr. old and had only received sugar water as nutrition. Funding has been provided to ensure he is receiving proper nutrition, his newborn vaccination, and HIV testing when he is 6 wks. old. We try to encourage mothers in our program to deliver at the Good Shepherd hospital. This guarentees that the baby will receive a prophylactic HIV medication that can reduce the mother to child transmission rate from 11% to 4%. We were not able to get this medication for Clement because it was not available at the local clinic.

There has been a couple of meetings with Dr. Joyce in which we have discussed the options of having a supply of medications for this purpose available at the local clinics and implimenting the latest treatments for HIV+ moms. Another thing that we have talked about is how to educate the Swazi women about the benefits of breast feeding.

However, often the expecting mothers don't want to let us know when they are going into labor because they don't have the money to deliver their babies at the hospital. It is our goal and desire to be able to have designated funds to make a hospital delivery possible for all women and to do what we can to eradicate the transmission of HIV from mom to baby.

Please pray as we try to convince these mothers to commit to a hospital delivery.

Mary and Clement