Two drugs for mums better than one

Giving pregnant HIV positive women two anti-AIDS drugs rather than one substantially reduces the chances of them passing the virus on to their babies, delegates to the 14th world AIDS conference in Barcelona were told yesterday (Monday).

According to Dr Mary Glenn Fowler of the US Centres for Disease Control, a study from Thailand showed that a combination of the drugs AZT and nevirapine for mothers and AZT for babies reduced the HIV transmission rate to 3,9%.

Nevirapine alone, which is what is used in South Africa, cuts the transmission rate by up to 50%.

Fowler said that a short course of anti-AIDS drugs for mothers during pregnancy should also be considered as it reduced their viral loads, making it less likely that they would pass HIV to their babies.

Meanwhile research due to be presented on Thursday by South Africa’€™s Dr Glenda Gray shows that giving nevirapine to babies only shortly after birth was as effective in blocking HIV transmission as treating both mothers and babies.

HIV transmission via breastfeeding continues to pose a danger for babies, said Fowler, but it was generally accepted that it was more dangerous for babies in areas without clean running water to be formula fed. However, researchers and governments needed to find ways to support HIV positive women who chose not to breastfeed, such as manufacturing cheap pre-mixed long-life formula milk.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation’€™s (WHO) Isabelle de Zoysa said her organisation had serious reservations about universally dishing out nevirapine to pregnant women who had not had HIV tests in areas where HIV infection was high.

Women at some of the nevirapine sites in South Africa have asked to be given the drug but not the test as they were too afraid to know their HIV status.

However, De Zoysa said this was not ideal as the voluntary counselling and HIV testing that were the cornerstone of most prevention of mother-to-child transmission programmes enabled women who tested HIV positive to get access to support and care and were educated about the risk posed by breastfeeding.

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