Intrahealth supports health workers around the world to better serve their communities. I recently traveled to northern Namibia where they work with the government and other organizations to distribute ARVs, administer health services, and work on a HIV prevention program.
Over 20% of the population in Namibia have HIV, many with HIV are young children. Since 2005 a massive effort has helped give many people access to ARVs and prevent mother to child transmission. With modern medicine, no child need be born with HIV.
Life with HIV has changed fundamentally in Africa. Health care workers used to only help people die, today, they prepare them to live. To visit communities where this change has occurred is shocking, to hear of the despair, and see the hope. But their lives are tenuous. Namibia is poor and supplying the complex level of care needed to keep people alive is difficult. Countries like the US have made it a priority to do so and countless people are alive because of it. But tomorrow this promise may be broken.
These photographs document mothers and children living with HIV, and the health system that makes this possible. Before I arrived I knew the statistics, but nothing prepared me for seeing children getting tested, taking daily pills, eating supplementary food and doing everything necessary to stay alive. One can only think, why would an innocent child deserve this. But this need not happen again. It is up to us to make this a reality.
