Maputo — The Mozambican health authorities are advising HIV-positive mothers to breast feed their babies if they are unable to afford alternatives, despite the risk of transmitting the virus via breast milk.

This information was given on Tuesday by Hemlaximin Nataial, a paediatrician at Maputo's Jose Macamo General Hospital. According to Nataial, the health authorities opted for a lesser of two evils approach when they discovered that a high percentage of the children born to HIV positive mothers were malnourished.

She told AIM that some HIV positive mothers have no money to buy artificial milk for their babies, and in other cases, they lack hygienic conditions in their homes to prepare the milk, particularly concerning care for the utensils to prepare and administer the milk.

"Under our conditions, we have no alternative but to advise the HIV-positive mothers to breastfeed their babies. Most of these mothers have no financial capacity to purchase artificial milk. In other cases, the mothers have no conditions to treat the bottles and to prepare the milk with good quality drinking water", she explained

Nataial said that "The lack of conditions to treat milk for the babies may result in diarrhoeal diseasess, and we have recorded many such cases'.

Nataial said that her hospital receives many cases of malnourished children, and the paediatric ward is always overcrowded. Sometimes one can find two or three children sleeping in the same bed.