This is where mothers2mothers comes in. The charity was founded in 2001 in Cape Town by Harvard-trained obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr. Mitch Besser, who, as Emma tells me, “was having to convey health and hope to women who were probably thinking ‘how could you [Dr. Besser] possibly know what it feels like to face the stigma of HIV, how can you possibly know what it’s going to feel like to go home and tell my mother-in-law who I live with, or my husband, that I’m HIV positive?’ So Dr. Besser came to the realisation that the people who could really help these women were other women who’d been in their position.” And so, mothers2mothers employs around 1,600 HIV positive women and trains them as frontline community healthcare workers, so that they can lead the way for other women in their communities who are HIV positive and educate them in how to protect their babies and look after themselves. “The beauty of our model,” Emma continues, “is that we are able to have a woman sit down with another woman, mother to mother, and say ‘I was in your shoes two years ago, I have HIV, my baby was born free from HIV because of mothers2mothers. Look at me, I'm well, I'm healthy, I’m thriving, and you can thrive too.’”