Margaret's story

Margaret gave birth on a Ugandan roadside.

She'd been rushing to the hospital when the painful contractions had grown too strong for her to continue. "[My mother] found me an hour later lying by the roadside after giving birth," she remembers.

Margaret is HIV-positive, and she knew that without the right care she had a one-in-three chance of passing the disease to her baby daughter, Zaidah. But she also knew that if she could get Zaidah to the hospital immediately, she could break the cycle of HIV in her family.

Margaret had attended a World Vision workshop for HIV-positive people, where she'd learned that pregnant women could get medicine to help keep their babies HIV-free. That's why she'd fought so hard to get to the hospital — she knew that delivering at home with a traditional birth attendant would greatly increase the likelihood that she'd pass HIV to her baby.

Fortunately, little Zaidah arrived at the hospital in time for an injection and syrup that would significantly lower her risk of contracting HIV. "I have so far taken her for three tests and they have all come out negative," Margaret says of her daughter, now 9 months old.

"I'm grateful to those World Vision trainers," she says, "because without that knowledge I would have infected my child."

Margaret's determination and World Vision's training helped save Zaidah's life. But Margaret knows there's more to the story. "God must have given [Zaidah] an HIV-free life for a reason," she says. "Otherwise, how do you explain the way [she] survived?"

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