Monday, April 7

As mentioned, today is Women's Day in Mozambique. It is a day to honor the nation's women who fought for independence from Portugal. The women of our group have decided a nationally recognized Women's Day is needed in our respective countries as well! Despite the holiday, the dedicated staff of UNICEF was willing to come into the office to brief us on the Country Programme for 2007 - 2009. The focus was on the PMTCT and the mobile units' activities as this is where FTSE's donation is being allocated. The UNICEF Country Representative, Leila Pakkala, briefed us on the program, and introduced us to the UNICEF members who would be accompanying us in the field:
Patricia Portela de Souza, UNICEF Programme Communication Specialist
Dezi Mahotas, UNICEF Health Specialist
Gabriel Pereira, UNICEF Communication Officer
The most compelling piece of the briefing that I took away was the comprehensiveness of the programme. Yes there is an HIV/AIDS component but as UNICEF pointed out, one can't work on this issue without looking at the others surrounding it: health and nutrition, water sanitation and hygiene, basic education, and child protection. All of these areas have an HIV/AIDs component. Once a child is born free of HIV, it is important to keep them that way, and enable them to receive an education, have access to clean water, and avoid the other deadly diseases that can inflict young in the area.
Leila ran us through a very thorough presentation that outlined all of the work that UNICEF is embarking on in Mozambique. She gave us some staggering statistics:
- 50% of the country's population is under the age of 18
- HIV is hitting women 3 times more than men
- Mozambique was the poorest country in the world in 1992 but has experienced positive economic growth of 7-9% each year to pull itself up 7 spaces in the world's GDP ranking in just 15 short years
These facts highlight how important UNICEF's work is in this country. The government is strong, growing, and eager to help their population, but the children first have to survive to receive these benefits and continue to develop the nation into the future.
With women contracting HIV at a much high rate, this was the logical choice to focus HIV prevention efforts. When women go to a clinic for pre-natal care, it is a prime time to start prevention. Health workers have the mother's attention so they can receive counseling on family planning, vaccinations, HIV testing, and if positive, PMTCT services that can drop the chances of transferring the virus from 25%down to just 5%. By having these services integrated into one clinic helps the women feel more comfortable and alleviates the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS.

I could probably write a whole report on the information that we received in the briefing, but I will stop for now. There is an excellent PowerPoint presentation, in case anyone is interested. After leaving the UNICEF offices, our group took a tour of Maputo to learn a little about its history and culture. After that it was off to the airport for the next leg of our journey to Beira.

Beria is the second largest city in Mozambique. We arrived late in the evening and while driving to the hotel noticed a strong difference to Maputo. Patricia noticed our stares and remarked, "This is the real Mozambique". The city is significantly poorer with no tourist dollars coming in, the dirt roads and crumbling housing structures were evidence to that fact. After checking in we walked down the street for a quick dinner where a restaurant stayed open just to serve us. Tomorrow we visit the first clinic, Manga-Mascarenhas Health Centre.