Media Center

©UNICEF/China

Her children were dying, but Miya never imagined AIDS was involved. “My husband and I tried everything we could but ultimately two of our children passed away,” she says.

It was a tragic story. “My eldest daughter died just before her second birthday. Our second child did not reach her sixth month,” said Miya. “

Miya lives with her husband in a small and poor village in Southwest China. They work on a farm and always considered themselves strong and healthy. They knew about AIDS but never thought they would be affected because neither of them had been involved with injecting drugs, unlike the people they knew who were living with HIV. 

Fortunately, her family finally got the help they needed thanks to UNICEF and Government support. “We never thought of AIDS,” said Miya. “It was only after a self-help group took us to do a test that we found out we are HIV-positive. Now we are on ARV treatment, and I have a healthy baby. The project saved us, my husband, our baby and me.”

When pregnant with her third child, Miya met Aling, a peer educator in the Community Care for Prevention-of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) Project, funded by Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and UNICEF. The peer educators work in communities to encourage all mothers and prospective mothers to test for HIV and accept the free triple-treatment of specialized drugs to prevent their newborns from entering the world with HIV.

When Aling visited Miya's village, she went house to house and explained how she was benefitting from the AIDS treatment and encouraged everyone to take a free HIV test. Miya was surprised and had her preconceptions about HIV challenged - she thought Aling looked too healthy and pretty to be HIV-positive.