Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)
4 August 2008
Six African nations are among nine that will benefit from a 50 million-dollar initiative by UN agencies aimed at halting mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
The agencies made the announcement Thursday, ahead of the biennial global conference on HIV/AIDS that opens in Mexico this Sunday.
According to the 2008 UN Report on the global AIDS epidemic released on Tuesday, the percentage of HIV-positive pregnant women receiving antiretroviral drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission rose from 14 per cent to 33 per cent from 2005 to 2007. The number of new infections among children fell from 410,000 to 370,000 in the same period.
Over the next two years, some 10 million pregnant women will be tested for HIV under the new initiative and 285 000 mothers and children will be treated in the nine target countries.
The initiative will cover the Central African Republic, Lesotho, Nigeria, Swaziland, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The other countries are Myanmar, China and Haiti. The countries represent approximately 25 percent of the world's HIV-infected pregnant women giving birth annually.
"This effort aims to go beyond mere prevention by promoting ongoing treatment for mothers and their babies," said Dr Philippe Douste-Blazy, chair of UNITAID, the international financing facility committed to the scale-up of treatment and care for HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
"Our aim is to fund the most effective and appropriate medicines and diagnostics on the market for both women and children."
A novel element of the project is that it will allow the UN children's agency, UNICEF, to negotiate reduced drug prices, allowing for a greater scale-up of more effective treatment for HIV-infected women as well as aim to prevent infection in their children.
Funding will also provide a one-year course of antiretroviral treatment to HIV positive pregnant women in need in the nine countries.
"Testing pregnant women for HIV gives mothers a better chance to survive this disease," said Ann M. Veneman, UNICEF executive director. "Women, their children and their entire communities benefit when life-saving treatment is provided to HIV positive mothers as quickly as possible."
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