Child Poverty in Mozambique. A Situation and Trend ... - Unicef

highly in PARPA II, which sets a target of reducing underweight prevalence among
children to 17 per cent by the year 2009. What remains outstanding, however, is to
operationalise and give authority to the multisectoral strategy. The SETSAN evaluation
revealed that many sectoral Ministries have not integrated food security and nutrition
into their own sectoral strategies.
The stagnation in levels of malnutrition among children led the Ministry of Planning
and Development to comment in its June 2005 paper on the subject that, “A key
policy question is therefore how to translate the economic gains that are being made
into improved nutrition and health. In a multi-country analysis Haddad et al. (2003)
found that although economic growth alone would not be sufficient to meet targets
for reducing undernutrition, it could be expected to contribute much more than what
has been observed with the Mozambican data. This presents two challenges for
policy makers and programme managers in Mozambique. First, how can the link
between reducing income poverty and reducing undernutrition be strengthened, and
second, what are the most cost-effective direct investments that can be made to
improve children’s nutritional status above and beyond what can be achieved through
income growth. A first cut would likely include greater attention to intra-household
distribution of resources, promotion of nutrition education programs (particularly for
feeding of those less than two years old), accelerated progress in disease control
(especially diarrhoea and malaria), and improved access to primary health care”
(Simler & Ibrahimo, 2005).
7. HIV/AIDS
By 2006, over 1.6 million Mozambicans were estimated to live with HIV or AIDS, of
whom 58 per cent were women and 5 per cent were children under five years of age.
AIDS is fast becoming a major cause of mortality among children, with an estimated
20,000 children under five dying from AIDS in 2006 (Multisectoral Technical Group for
the Fight against HIV/AIDS, 2004).
A. Prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT)
Globally, each year 700,000 children under 15 years of age are infected with
HIV. More than 9 per cent of paediatric HIV infections are due to mother-to-child
transmission (Duerr, 2005). It is estimated that there were about 146,000 HIV-positive
pregnant women in 2006 in Mozambique, almost half of whom lived in the four
central provinces of the country. In the absence of preventive measures, transmission
rates are as high as 40 per cent, with up to two-thirds of the infections occurring
during labour, birth and pregnancy and one third occurring during breastfeeding.
Level of knowledge among the Mozambican population about mother-to-child
transmission of HIV remains low. The 2003 DHS indicated that only 44 per cent of
women and 43 per cent of men in the age group 15 to 49 had knowledge that HIV can
be transmitted from mother to child during pregnancy, delivery, and breastfeeding.
Knowledge among women greatly varied across provinces, from as low as 27 per
cent in Cabo Delgado province to as high as 79 per cent in Tete province. Knowledge
was significantly lower among women in rural areas, women with no education and
women in the poorest households. While knowledge across age groups does not vary
significantly, it is the lowest among young women of 15 to 19 years of age (41 per
cent). Counselling among pregnant women about HIV/AIDS during ante-natal care visit
also remains low at 51 per cent, with acute disparity across provinces, varying from
only 27 per cent in Zambezia province to 81 per cent in Maputo City.
106 CHILDHOOD POVERTY IN MOZAMBIQUE: A SITUATION AND TRENDS ANALYSIS