#Lastingchange : Postcard from Kenya
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I had a blog post scheduled up for today, something about a minor family crisis that happened over the weekend on the Lilypad that I was going to share on the blog, but then an email dropped into my inbox from Team Honk. An email that talks about their visit to the Mothers 2 Mothers project in Kisumu, Kenya. An email that makes you want to do something.
Kenya has the fourth-largest HIV epidemic in the world. An estimated 1.6 million people are living with HIV and 1.1 million children have been orphaned after losing one or both parents to the disease.
Thanks to Comic Relief funding, Mothers2Mothers is helping pregnant women living with HIV to access the life-saving health services they need to prevent mother-to-child transmission. The project is targeting Nyanza province where prevalence of the disease is almost three times higher than the national average.
Women often discover they are HIV positive during ante-natal care and mentoring helps them to come to terms with this, to deal with the side effects on antiretroviral drugs, to eat well and to deliver babies with the best chance of being HIV negative. Women also learn to breastfeed safely, and to avoid stigma.
Team Honk are finding out more about these projects and through blogging, are sharing them with a wider audience. They met with Elizabeth who says: “HIV is just a condition, you can go further, you can make wonders, you can help others” #lastingchange . The project exudes positivity but continues to need help with funding.
Breastfeeding is something close to my heart and the World Health Organisation recommends exclusive breastfeeding while taking HIV antiretroviral drugs. Mentoring enables women to breastfeed safely #lastingchange
So you can see that I changed my blog post for today, it was a small change in my world but the work being done by Comic Relief is making big changes across the world, let's see what else we can change?
#lastingchange
@RedNoseDay launches today for 2015. Let’s celebrate the difference donations to @ComicRelief make to lives across the world.
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