What is the issue?
A recent study shows complete elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV is possible.
How HIV is transmitted to child?
- Mother-to-child transmission MTCT is the primary route of transmission of HIV among children.
- Babies are infected during pregnancy, labour, delivery or while breastfeeding.
What is the status of MTCT HIV in India?
- Currently 5% of babies born to those who are HIV-positive get infected, if transmission rate is below 2% it is considered as elimination.
- According to NACO, only about 52.7% of pregnant mothers seek skilled care out of an estimated 27 million pregnancies in a year.
- An estimated 35,200 pregnancies occur in HIV-positive women and more than 10,300 infected babies are born annually, without any intervention.
What are the methods to prevent MTCT?
- Multidrug Therapy - India is following the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended ‘multidrug therapy’, which is a combination of three drugs — tenofovir, lamivudine and efavirenz (TLE).
- Affected women need to take it all their lives and nevirapine syrup for six weeks only for their babies.
- Multidrug therapy is usually adequate to drastically reduce a mother’s viral load.
- Caesarean - During a baby’s journey through the vaginal passage, contact with abrasions, secretions and blood, which contain the virus, increases the risk of transmission.
- Elective caesarean section and no breastfeeding will limits the transmission.
What are the challenges in India?
- Doctors recommend that HIV-positive women should not breastfeed as their milk harbours the virus.
- For patients from underprivileged classes, replacing the nutrition for the baby without breastfeeding is difficult.
- The enormous population in India makes it challenging for health-care workers to reach out to every pregnant woman.
- On the other hand, pregnant women too often delay registering for antenatal care.
Source: The Hindu
