HIV is not something that we have talked about since the early 1980‘s when we saw horrific ad campaigns educating the world on HIV/AIDS. It is however, still a major issue for many women worldwide with over 16 million women currently infected with HIV.
With the World Health Organization calling for the ‘eradication of pediatric HIV by 2015’ there is a good chance that we will be able to wipe out this deadly disease in the not to distant future. “There isn’t a reason in the world why a baby should be born with the HIV virus. It is easy and cheap to prevent. It comes down to caring for the only people who can stop this tragedy -- the mothers”. A strong and honest sentiment from Robin Smalley, co-founder of mothers2mothers - a charity created to educate, counsel and support HIV mothers in an effort to prevent the transmission of the deadly virus to their unborn babies.
Smalley has turned mothers2mothers into a multinational nonprofit organization with more than seven hundred sites throughout South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Malawi. They employ almost 1,800 HIV-positive mothers, and enrolled nearly 300,000 unique HIV-positive pregnant women and new mothers reaching about one in five of every HIV positive pregnant women in the world last year with messages of empowerment and education. mothers2mothers has been honored at the White House, briefed the Senate, and won the prestigious Skoll Entrepreneurial Award.
Co-author’s Melissa Macdonald and Tatyanna Wright and the creators of this blog, have partnered with mothers2mothers to bring the message to Australia – that communication between women is key. We can help and support each other at a grassroots level by being supportive, encouraging and sharing information with issues such as Breastfeeding, just like mothers2mothers are helping these women in third world nations’, Wright says. Macdonald wrote the Australian version of the best selling Breastfeeding book - ‘Breastfeeding: Real Mums Tell You How’, and due to its overwhelming success she has partnered with maternity expert Tatyanna Wright to co-write a USA version due out in August in time for ‘World Breastfeeding Week’.
"It’s amazing that once you are a mother you discover your part of this wider mother network or club’ so to speak says Macdonald, ‘you share similar stories and experiences and it gives you a connection as a woman and as a mother and you reach out to each other in times of need".
Every purchase of the book “Breastfeeding: Real Mums Tell You How” donates to this mothers2mothers. The book is available online and in leading bookstores and baby stores nationwide. Visit mothers2mothers site - www.m2m.org - to find out how you can do more. To find out more about HIV-Breastfeeding, click here.
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