Strengthening PMTCT
About one million babies are born in South Africa, annually. Three-hundred thousand of these babies are at risk of contracting HIV from their mothers. The National Plan for Acceleration of the Prevention of Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission (PMTCT A-Plan) aims to protect 75 000 of these babies from HIV infection.
Explaining the need for a revised PMTCT programme, Dr Gugu Ngubane, Project Manager for the PMTCT A-Plan said: ‘The quality of the (PMTCT) program is the problem and that’s why people are not receiving services that they need. We are improving the system’.
The Department’s Deputy Director for the programme, Precious Robinson, said the current programme has many challenges.
‘One gap was the (low) uptake of the dual prophylaxis – your AZT at 28 weeks and your Nevirapine. Women are testing for HIV, (but) figures show that very little or few women do get this prophylaxis, either because they would have booked and left or they totally are not being given the prophylaxis as expected’, she said.
Robinson added that the PMTCT A-Plan also hopes to improve on ways to keep track of mothers and their infants, after their enrolment into the PMTCT programme.
‘For example, these women would have tested, they would have come to us for prophylaxis, and they would have come to us to deliver at our facilities. Six weeks down the line when we expect them to bring the babies for (HIV) testing, we don’t actually see the babies coming back. As a result, we realise that we cannot measure the impact of the (PMTCT) program’, she said.
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