WUNRN
http://www.wunrn.com
Pacific Islands News Association
Source: AFP/PACNEWS
PAPUA NEW GUINEA - PREGNANT WOMEN
LACKING HIV CARE
01/12/2011, Papua New Guinea - Nearly 90 percent of pregnant women who are
HIV positive in Papua New Guinea fail to receive care to help prevent the virus
infecting their unborn child, a leading expert said.
Dr Mobuma Kiromat, clinical director of the Clinton Health Access Initiative
programme countering parent to child transmission in the Pacific nation, said
much had been done to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Papua New Guinea.
But more work was needed, particularly to assist pregnant women.”We still
haven't got it right, the (health) coverage actually is still very low,” she
told AFP from Sydney where she spoke at an event to mark World AIDS Day on
December 1.
Kiromat said about 2.3 percent of pregnant women who had the HIV virus which
causes AIDS had access to treatment to prevent the spread of the disease to
their baby in 2007, and this figure had grown to 11.1 percent in 2009. “We
would like that number to be above 50 percent,” she said.
“It needs a lot of work still, other areas have gone ahead like adult
treatment. But remember pregnant women are adults and many of them don't know
their (HIV) status.”
Impoverished Papua New Guinea was hard hit by the spread of the HIV virus but
the situation has improved thanks to aid programmes and estimates of the
infection among the population are about 0.9 percent, Kiromat said.
But pregnant women were still vulnerable, with many pre-natal clinics unable to
provide testing for the virus, she added.
Under a programme being rolled out across the nation, which treats women with
anti-retroviral medication treatments from early in their pregnancy until after
the baby is delivered, transmission of the virus to the child falls from about
30 percent to 10 percent, she said.
“You can never reduce it to zero because there are many factors along the way
which determine giving the virus to your baby," she said, including other
illness, poor nutrition and a low immunity.
There are about 390,000 cases of mother-to-child transmission of HIV around the
globe each year and the issue is a focus of this year's World AIDS Day.
Figures released last week by the United Nations showed new HIV infections have
dropped 21 percent since 1997 but some 1.8 million people died of AIDS-related
causes in 2010. Antiretroviral drugs were credited with saving 700,000 lives
last year.