Africa could stop babies getting HIV, experts say
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A Nigerian HIV-positive mother, whose two children did not contract the virus, challenged African countries on Saturday to make better use of simple, affordable tools to reduce mother-to-child transmission.
Adding her voice to those of world experts who met in Abuja to assess the fight against transmission to babies, Lucy Auwalu said antenatal care, drugs, information and clean water could give hope to HIV-positive African women who wanted children.
“When I first tested positive as a young woman I was scared, I thought ‘So this is how life will be ended for me’. I never knew there was going to be hope for me to have kids, and not just kids but kids who are HIV negative,” Auwalu told reporters.
More than 600,000 children are estimated to become infected with HIV each year - mostly in Africa - and in more than 90 percent of cases transmission is from mothers infected with the virus, according to the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
In rich countries, transmission to infants has been virtually eliminated. But overall, UNICEF says fewer than 10 percent of HIV positive pregnant women receive services to prevent transmission to their babies, and it is calling for a massive increase in such services in poor countries.
“We now have the tools that can bring down transmission rates from infected mothers to their infants from up to 45 percent down to 2 to 4 percent,” said Isabelle de Zoysa, special adviser on HIV/AIDS to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
“What is missing is the political will and the programmatic drive. ... If we applied this technical knowledge and experience universally we could probably eliminate HIV infections in infants in the coming years,” she said.
DOCTOR DIDN’T KNOW DRUG
Auwalu was able to prevent transmission of HIV to her children because she learnt on the Internet about a drug called nevirapine that could be taken in a single dose at the start of labour to significantly reduce the risk of transmission.
But at home in Lagos, her local obstetrician had never heard of the treatment and she was not able to get hold of the drug. She eventually managed to obtain it from a friend who visited the United States.
“I was better informed than the doctor. I carried the nevirapine around with me in my handbag, ready to use it as soon as the time came,” she said.
Auwalu also learnt on the Internet that she could further reduce the risk of transmission by giving her babies formula rather than breast-feeding them.
Now, she has two healthy sons aged four and one, and she has set up an NGO that helps Nigerian pregnant women who have HIV/AIDS obtain information and treatment.
Auwalu was lucky in that she had access to the Internet in the first place, she had the connection and the money to purchase the drug, and she had a supply of clean water to mix with the baby milk formula.
But millions of HIV-positive African women have none of those advantages.
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