HIV Woman Arrested For Breastfeeding Neighbour’s Baby
A Zimbabwean woman who breastfed a neighbour’s baby without her consent
faces a possible two-year sentence for deliberately infecting another
person with HIV after she tested positive.
39-year-old Annie
Mpariwa appeared in court on Wednesday … the case was deferred to
October 24 to allow a second HIV test to be performed on the toddler.
The child’s initial results were negative. Mpariwa was arrested last
week on charges of common nuisance and should the child test positive;
the charge will be raised to “deliberately infecting another person with
HIV”.
The mother of the 14-month-old baby said seeing her child being breastfed by her neighbour was traumatising.
She alleged that her neighbour snatched the child while she was playing outside and hid her in her room.
After searching for the child for quite some time, she went and knocked on Mpariwa’s rented room and got no response.
Upon peeping through the window, she saw her breastfeeding the little girl.
I
was shocked. I nearly fainted,” she said, adding that her breasts were
leaking milk yet she was not a nursing mother or pregnant.
The
incident comes in the wake of a newly enacted law on HIV and Aids that
calls for stiffer penalties on people who deliberately infect others
with HIV.
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