Looking for a last minute gift for Mother's Day? Christian organisation Chasing Zero, which is committed to seeing the end of AIDS-related deaths worldwide, is offering a present your mum will love, with a difference.
Through a new initiative, a Mother's Day card – purchased for £15 – will fund a 'Mother Buddy' for a pregnant woman in Malawi, where women are more than 60 times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than in the UK and a child is 10 times more likely to die in the first year of its life.
Malawi is the poorest country in the world, with a GDP of just £163 per capita – less than 50p per week. One in ten adults is HIV positive and thousands of children are born with the virus every year.
According to UN estimates, more than one million Malawians are currently living with HIV, around 130,000 of whom are children aged 0-14. There are believed to be between 370,000 and 890,000 orphaned children as a result of AIDS.
Through Chasing Zero's scheme, pregnant women are being assigned someone to visit them, both before and after their child's birth.This will provide women with vital healthcare and information that could help transform maternal statistics.
An evaluation carried out by Tearfund, which works alongside the charity, found that the number of newborn children carrying the HIV virus, born to HIV positive mothers in Malawi, has halved as a result of the Mother Buddies programme.
It also found there had been a significant increase in women able to access antenatal care, and a 40 per cent increase in women eating three meals a day during their pregnancy.
Chasing Zero also offers a 'Pregnancy Twinning' package aimed at expectant mothers in the UK, costing £40 – £1 for every week of pregnancy. It pays for eight visits from a Mother Buddy for a pregnant woman in Malawi, and funds basic medical care, HIV testing, nutritional support, advice on breastfeeding and transport to a medical facility for birth.
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