Ivy Benson
18 November 2004
opinion
70% of babies born, never develop AIDS
A RESEARCH conducted worldwide by Orphanage Africa, a non-governmental organization providing care and support for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS and other diseases with its headquarters in Spain, indicated that a greater number of babies born by HIV positive mothers would in no way be infected by the virus after 18months, a period considered the most vulnerable in human life.
According to the research, 70% of babies born by HIV infected mothers would escape being infected with the disease and live a normal life in the absence of stigmatizing.
This new revelation, could give hundreds of HIV infected mothers hope for the future of their newborn babies.
At a press conference organized by Orphanage Africa in collaboration with NGOs working in the field of AIDS, in Accra yesterday, the coalition explained that there was a dialogue currently going on in the country to develop a new regulation that barred the testing of new born babies for HIV.
The press conference was to highlight the hopeful news available to newly born babies of HIV positive mothers to discourage stigmatization since love and care were the only tools that would enable them thrive.
As indicated by its spokesperson, Lisa Lovatt-Smith, Co-President of Orphanage Africa, the introduction of the new regulation was incited by the fact that the common available HIV testing methods currently being used in the country only measure the antibodies acquired by the babies from their HIV infected mothers.
According to her, other testing systems such as co-cultivation, Ag p24 and PCR, not available in most of African countries, provided accurate results in newborn babies. She noted that the antibodies of the infected mothers could be present in the bloodstream of the newborn babies until after 18 months, when they would develop their own antibodies. The coalition, therefore, debunked assertions that once babies under 18 months born by an infected mother tested positive with the three usual HIV tests, they were equally positive with the virus.
Additionally, it decried the widespread practice of abandoning the innocent babies born to People Living With HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) with the notion that the babies would not survive.
The coalition further said after 18 months in the life of the newly born babies, results of their HIV status would be accurate.
In this regard, the co-president of Orphanage Africa noted that the Ministry of Health was considering forbidding HIV testing on newborn babies in order to protect them from the stigma associated with HIV positive persons, when in actual fact the baby might not be infected with the disease.
She, therefore, urged all pregnant women to make themselves available for free HIV testing to ensure that the appropriate drugs were administered on them during pregnancy and labour to guarantee a greater probability of their babies testing negative with the virus.
Worldwide, there is a 25% to 35% likelihood of women infected with the virus transmitting the disease to their babies.
Ivy Benson is a Member of League of HIV/Aids Reporters (lohar)
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