Maternity wards are usually the happiest places in a hospital. Tragically, there is often not much joy when a baby is born in South Africa.
About a third of the women on Sylvia Lamola’s maternity ward at any time giving birth carry the HIV virus, the nurse, midwife and HIV/ AIDS counsellor at Pretoria’s Medforum Medi-Clinic said.
A significant number of those women’s babies also become infected with the virus, she said. Tragically, she said that about one in five of 200 of those who gave birth at her hospital, which is one of the busiest in the South African capital, were still in high school.
Matthew Fisher
The Star Phoenix
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