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New studies raise questions about policy toward HIV positive mothers
15 March 2007
Clare Nullis
PlanetSave
Cape Town, South Africa (AP) Two-month-old Banele Dlamini awakes from a deep slumber and sucks hungrily at a bottle of formula proffered by his HIV-positive mother.
Humming as she boils water in a kettle for his next feed, Zelda Dlamini says she is grateful to health workers in the sprawling slums of Soweto for telling her to avoid breast-feeding to ensure she does not pass the virus to the infant.
But that established advice to HIV positive mothers in many developing countries has now been questioned. New U.S. funded studies indicate that the risk of a baby contracting HIV through breast-milk is lower than the health risks of being denied its nutritional and protective benefits. That is particularly true in poor countries where mothers don't have sure access to clean water with which to prepare formula.
"It's a dilemma. Should you try and avert HIV transmission and at the same time risk them to these childhood illnesses like diarrhea and pneumonia, which are major killers on their own, or leave them to get HIV but save them from these other major childhood illnesses?'' said Dr. Prisca Kasonde, who worked as a clinical coordinator on the Zambian part of the studies.
The outcome of the trials in Zambia and other southern African nations showed that in poor countries like Zambia and Malawi _ which have poor access to clean water and high AIDS rates _ there were clear advantages to HIV infected mothers giving their babies only breast milk until the age of six months and then combining breast-milk with other food until about 18 months as is the norm in Africa. The conventional wisdom was that HIV infected mothers who chose to breast-feed should stop no later than six months.
Keywords: New studies, policy, HIV positive, mothers
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