Hope in the battle against HIV/AIDS

Erica Corbett is doing a master's degree in Community Health and Epidemiology at Dalhousie. (Danny Abriel Photo)

Barabara ina cheza. The road is dancing.

It’s a saying in Kiswahili that Erica Corbett learned quickly as she bounced along as a passenger in a SUV, her head knocking against the roof, on her way to a rural health clinic in southern Tanzania.

As the SUV negotiated the potholed road, she spied a man just ahead, peddling furiously on a bicycle. Behind him, perched on the carrier, was his heavily pregnant wife, one hand supporting her swelling belly, the other holding on for dear life. As the SUV passed, the pair was enveloped in clouds of billowy dust.

Even after three years of living in Africa, Ms. Corbett is still amazed by what women will go through in order to get the healthcare most in the West take for granted. Here in Canada, where roads are smooth and medical care is free and accessible, getting to the clinic on time to deliver a baby seems relatively simple. But not so in rural Tanzania.

That day, the couple on the bike—the long distance to travel, the ‘bumps’ in the road—brought this lesson home again. Sometime later, Ms. Corbett was sitting with the midwife in the sparsely furnished maternity ward of the clinic, when the man and woman flew into the dusty yard; they were just in time for the midwife to catch the baby. The woman didn’t even make it inside the clinic before her baby arrived.

“I’ll never get that image out of my head,” says Ms. Corbett, 27. “It’s what gets me out of bed in the morning and makes me want to keep working towards eliminating the barriers to women’s equitable access to quality reproductive health care. No matter what their circumstance, women deserve the right to a safe delivery and appropriate medical care.”

She could be the poster child for experiential learning—that chance to put your university education into practice.

“You can read stuff in a textbook over and over until you’ve memorized it, but the importance of experiential learning can’t be over-emphasized,” say Ms. Corbett, back at university doing her master’s degree in Community Health and Epidemiology at Dalhousie after working for three years in Southern Africa. Once her thesis is completed, and with more research skills and clinical experience under her belt, she’s eager to get back out there. This time, she’d like to address the issue of male involvement on women’s reproductive health outcomes.

Ms. Corbett, the 2008 recipient of the Dr. Ron Stewart Award for Student Leadership in Global Health, believes measures to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child offer a ray of hope against a disease that has ravaged a continent. To put the scope of the problem in perspective, more babies are born with HIV in one clinic in Africa than in one year in the United States, Canada and England combined. But with the right interventions, these transmission rates are preventable.

“This is a way to make a positive impact on the pandemic,” says Ms. Corbett, who caught her passion for this work from Stephen Lewis, former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, at a lecture just as she was finishing her undergraduate degree at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. That same evening, she called her parents and suggested a plane ticket to South Africa would be a perfect graduation present.

Even as she completes her studies in Halifax, she’s mindful of the women she has met, particularly while working with Mothers to Mothers (M2M), an organization that began in Cape Town, South Africa in 2001.

Now a multinational NGO, M2M aims to prevent babies from contracting HIV through mother-to-child transmission; to keep mothers and babies living with HIV/AIDS alive and healthy by increasing their ability to access health-sustaining medical care; and to empower mothers to battle the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS in their families and their communities. What is unique about M2M is that mothers living openly with HIV/AIDS act as mentors to support and educate their pregnant peers. At a time when a woman’s disclosure of the disease can still get her kicked out of the family home, the mentors provide living proof that HIV is no longer a death sentence for them or their children.

“What these women are able to say is, ‘Look, where you are now, I was there too. And look, my baby is healthy.’”

On World AIDS Day on December 1, Dalhousie medical students and the Global Health Initiative, held a martini night at the Bitter End, with M2M as the beneficiary. Ms. Corbett estimates the $1,000 raised will fund approximately 30 women from start to finish through M2M’s pioneering program.

“People hear the bad news (from Africa) and they don’t know what they can do,” she says. “It’s nice to be part of a community providing something tangible to another community halfway around the world.”

She’s hoping to raise more money for M2M through sponsorships by running in the Hypothermic Half Marathon. The run takes place in Point Pleasant Park on February 15.

If you’re interested in supporting M2M by sponsoring Ms. Corbett, please e-mail her at e.corbett@dal.ca.