The need for HIV positive mothers to breastfeed their babies for at least three months to give them a head start in life has been emphasized by the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria.

Presenting a paper during a seminar on Breastfeeding, a Challenge for HIV Positive Mothers, the resident matron of the Maitama General Hospital, Mrs Hassan Aishatu told nurses to encourage their HIV positive mothers to breast feed their children to help build their immune system.

The nurse who advised that HIV positive mothers should not view their situation as the end of the world, emphasized the need for them to seek voluntary counseling and testing at HIV centre to prevent mother to child transmission.

According to her, Nigeria adopted the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) policy in 2003 with the main purpose of reducing HIV transmission by MTCT to 50% in 2010, and also increased access to quality HIV counseling and testing services by 2010.

She added that mothers with advanced HIV, may not breastfeed so as not to transmit the virus to their child.

She enumerated other infant feeding options for HIV positive mothers saying, "there are three major feeding options in the first 6 months, one is using infant formulas which must be affordable, feasible, acceptable, safe and sustainable".

" the second is exclusive breast feeding with short cessation- 3 months, or if possible breast milk feeding i.e. express and heated breast milk at temperature 62.5c for 5 minutes".

She however lamented that the problems of positive mothers was compounded by the issues of high cost of infant formulas and stigmatization.