Babies getting HIV from their infected mothers is rare in a cluster of 39 villages in the OR Tambo district in the Eastern Cape despite more than a third of pregnant women in this rural part of the province being HIV positive.
Here, a non-profit organisation that helps with health services for moms and their young children employ women who themselves have HIV to help infected mothers stay on antiretroviral treatment so that they dont pass on the virus to their babies.
But their peer-support programme doesnt stop at HIV care in these last-mile communities, where close to 90 of people live far from services like electricity, piped water and healthcare.
Health reporter Zano Kunene travels with these lay workers as they visit moms and their children to do basic health checks from tracking growth to making sure they get their childhood shots on time.
In todays newsletter , Zano Kunene takes us around Nyandeni local municipality in the Eastern Cape, where mentor mothers help keep new moms living with HIV, healthy. Sign up today .
Travelling around Nyandeni, a local municipality in the OR Tambo district in the Eastern Cape, is a bumpy ride. Here, like in almost the whole of the province , roads are mostly untarred.
To get to a clinic, people have to either walk about 20km or take a guruguru a bakkie that operates as a taxi, which travels to the health facility at 5am and back again at 5pm to take them home.
OR Tambo, which spans an area of about 12 140km 2 and has Port St Johns on the Wild Coast about halfway between its southern and northern borders, is deeply rural and one of the poorest districts in South Africa . About 90 of people here live in so-called last-mile communities villages and informal settlements that are far from services like electricity, piped water and healthcare.
On the gravel roads of Nyandeni, youre bound to see women like Nosizwe Peter, 58, walking in their bright green t-shirts.
