A programme to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission has been launched.

It will involve free provision of the anti-retroviral drug - Nevirapine - to the 150,000 infected pregnant mothers and their infants in the provincial and district hospitals.

Mothers will be given a dose of Nevirapine at the onset of labour while the infants' dose will be administered hours after birth.

Currently, Kenya has about 106,000 HIV-positive children aged below five years, majority of whom were infected by their mothers.

Launching the programme in Nairobi, Public Health Minister Sam Ongeri said Nevirapine and other anti-retroviral drugs had been proved to reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission of the killer virus by 40 to 50 per cent.

Mother-to-child transmission is the most significant source of HIV infection in children and occurs during delivery and through breast-feeding.

Prof Ongeri said studies in Kenya reveal that 30 to 40 per cent of children born to HIV-positive mothers and who are breast-fed for 18 to 24 months get infected from the mother's milk. Between 25 and 35 per cent of those breast-fed for six months get infected while only about 15 per cent of babies not breast-fed at all get infected.

He said the Ministry of Health was currently training health workers to administer the drug which is now available in provincial and district hospitals. The programme will later be expanded to health centres and dispensaries.

The World Health Organisation country representative, Dr Peter Eriki, said the programme would also focus on improvement of health services, voluntary counselling and testing, antenatal case management and safe delivery and infant feeding.

He said that due to the role of breast milk in HIV-transmission, there was need to help mothers survive and be able to breast-feed their babies exclusively for up to six months when alternative feeding is not feasible.

Unicef Country Representative Nicholas Alipui said: "In the next 12 months for example, more than 1,050,000 births will occur in Kenya. Out of these, 14 per cent will be exposed to HIV through mother-to-child transmission, which translates to approximately 150,000 children born to HIV-positive mothers, of whom 30 to 40 per cent are likely to contract HIV."

He said the organisation had allocated $3.5 million to HIV/Aids related activities in Kenya through the multi-sectoral programme of co-operation.