NEW HIV PROGRAM FOR WOMEN IN AFRICA SHOWS PROMISE

courtesy UN

The African HIV epidemic is one of greatest obstacles to the development in subsaharan countries.

Efforts to tackle the problem has raised more questions than answers.  

One of the most daunting problems is the rate of infections transmitted to the unborn.  This is a question that has been very difficult to address.  

But  a new program aims to cut all possibility of such transmission by keeping infected women on the HIV triple therapy medication perpetually so that the levels of the virus are too low to infect the foetus.

Previous programs either tested the mother for the antibodies and then assessed the level of infection prior to medication which was administered only during childbirth or constantly throughout pregnancy if the level of infection was already severe.  

In subsaharan Africa almost 300,000 children are born with HIV each year.

Map of HIV incidence in Africa

The program, which has been already implemented in Malawi, has seen a positive change in the statistics of newborn infections.  The CDC, which monitors the program, has seen very encouraging results, which point to a successful and feasable country wide application of the program with good results.  Doctors in the programs believe that just in Malawi, 7,000 children were prevented from getting the HIV virus in the first year of the program. 

Women of childbearing age account for nearly 60% of new infections.

Some have criticized the program.  A leading South African specialist thinks that this might be an overly publicized program.  When it was presented at the AIDS conference in Washington D.C., there was a discrete buzz, as if the program constituted a radical solution that would change the destiny of the African subcontinent, with the US taking most of the credit in the pet program.  

What this specialist believes is that it is a program that does not sufficiently account for the ill effects of the medicine, and the economic concerns of the adoption of such a widespread program.  

He contends that cheaper programs have had equally good results, citing the reduction in other locales from 33% to just 3% of transmission from mother to child by using cheaper , older drugs and reserving triple treament for the more severe cases.

He also calls for a better study of the program's results and effects before wider implementation in other countries.  

Seven other African countries and Haiti are already implementing or have approved the plan for the future.

Source NPR 3.1.13