Be the Generation to End Paediatric AIDS in Africa

As we draw to the end of another incredibly busy year, I would like to reflect on what 2017 has meant for mothers2mothers (m2m) and the communities we serve across eight sub-Saharan African nations.

Three years ago, m2m embarked on an ambitious strategic plan to grow our programme in both scale and scope by the end of 2017, aiming to deliver services across five integrated programme areas. Over the past year, we have succeeded in executing our strategy. In 2016 alone, m2m and our partners enrolled 1.95 million new clients across these five service lines.

We have remained committed to preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV, but have also successfully innovated and built on our strengths to comprehensively address HIV’s causes and effects. Our family-centric approach now provides support at almost all stages of life for a range of health and social issues for everyone in a family, including pregnant women, new mothers, infants, children, adolescents, and male partners. Through this model, not only are we ending mother-to-child transmission of HIV, but we are also changing lives through vital interventions in areas such as Early Childhood Development and Adolescent Health and Positive Youth Development.

Here are some of the other results that made us the most proud this year:

• Virtual elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV: m2m helped to virtually eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV (MTCT) among our enrolled clients for the third year in a row. (UNAIDS considers virtual elimination a transmission rate of 5% or below—ours is just 1.6%!)
• Broader scope of our work: m2m provided services to almost 220,000 adolescent girls and young women in seven countries, and more than 14,000 children benefitted from our Early Childhood Development programmes in four countries.
• Improved retention and adherence: m2m successfully supported HIV-positive pregnant women to remain in care and stay on their antiretroviral therapy (ART)—two of the biggest globally-recognised challenges to eliminating paediatric AIDS. 98% of m2m clients consistently take ART more than 80% of the time, which is sufficient to reduce a person’s viral load to an undetectable level. 93% of m2m’s HIV-positive pregnant clients who started ART remained on treatment after three months. This is a critical period of time when many women drop out of treatment due to fears of stigma and discrimination.

If you would like to read more about m2m’s impact, please refer to our full evaluation highlights.

Ending the year on a high note, we were delighted when one of our Mentor Mothers in South Africa, Irene Nkosi, was named by People Magazine as one of the 25 women changing the world. She was the only African on the list, which also included wildlife activist Jane Goodall, actors Gal Gadot and Kathy Bates, and singer and activist Demi Lovato. We are also thrilled to be supported by two amazing women who recently joined m2m as Patrons: activist, actress, producer, and director Salma Hayek and long-time m2m supporter, internationally acclaimed singer-songwriter, and human rights activist Annie Lennox. 

We could not have achieved any of this without the amazing support of our donors. To each and every one of you, I send my heartfelt gratitude. Your commitment has made it possible for m2m to achieve these remarkable results. Yet if we are serious about the Global Goals of ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic and delivering gender equality by 2030, the scale of the task that lies ahead is sobering. But with supporters such as yourselves by our side, I know we will continue to make significant contributions to making an AIDS-free generation possible.

From the entire m2m family to you and your loved ones, we send warm wishes for a wonderful holiday season and a very happy and healthy new year.