The mother buddies, who are all HIV positive women who have given birth to HIV negative babies, assist neighbouring mothers-to-be who are at risk of passing on the immunodeficiency virus to their children.

Appointed by village leaders across communities in rural Malawi, the women are given a smartphone to log and track their clients’ progress, in which they record their health details over eight visits to the mother, which start in the first three months of the pregnancy, right through to when the child is two years old.

Using a smartphone app and their training from a local charity named LISAP, a charitable group which works in sponsored_longform with Tearfund to halt the spread of HIV, the buddies inform mothers of how to avoid spreading the virus to their newborn.

Providing key information about how to prevent the spread of the virus, the mother buddies are an essential diplomat between the mother-to-be and local hospitals.

During the visits, partners are informed that they should abstain from extra-marital sex and rest during pregnancy (too much work could compromise their immune system and make it more likely for them to contract HIV during intercourse). They are also told to eat from six key food groups to ensure that they and the baby are getting the nutrients that they need.

The mother buddies also encourage the mothers-to-be to give birth in hospital, rather than at home. Most prefer to give birth at home because the health centres are so far away, but the mother buddies inform these women that due to the trauma of birth, many babies could cause a tear in the womb due to stress and movement, which would mean that their blood would be infected with HIV. Therefore it is safer for them to give birth in hospital.

“In the work that I'm doing, we have four key messages,” she says.

How mothers in Malawi have completely transformed the fight against HIV